


In Between the Bright Lights and the Far Unlit Unknown

by musingsonaredradish, seaouryou



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-15
Updated: 2014-05-20
Packaged: 2018-01-15 20:46:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 30,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1318648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musingsonaredradish/pseuds/musingsonaredradish, https://archiveofourown.org/users/seaouryou/pseuds/seaouryou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A tale of love, lies, and competitive roller skating, set against the inherently comedic backdrop of the early eighties.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Blaine stood hunched behind one of the sickly buckeyes that lined the far end of the parking lot, out of sight of the school and the students shuffling towards it. He had his compact in hand—the one he’d swiped from his mother when the powder had run out—and was peering into it as he fussed with his hair. He was wired on too much coffee and not enough sleep, but even with the extra waking hours that morning, his hair was still only almost right. Turning his naturally frizzy hair into a sophisticated feathered do was a well-developed skill of his, but today perfection was eluding him.

Of course it had to happen today of all days, Blaine thought glumly. Starting a new school was hard enough, but he was in a new school in an entirely new state, two weeks into the semester. In other words, just late enough for everyone to take notice of him. With so many factors working against him, it didn’t seem fair that his hair was suddenly one of them.

Blaine missed California more than he could say. Life felt like a music video out there, where everything was as sunny and buoyant as Blaine himself. And once his parents had gone ahead to Ohio to set up the homestead, leaving Blaine under the care of his brother for an entire summer, Blaine had enjoyed a degree of freedom that bordered on neglect. Cooper was always off working, or trying to work—it was a skill that he hadn’t started developing until later in life, and he still wasn’t much good at it—and he didn’t even expect Blaine to check in with him. Blaine had spent his afternoons cutting a wide swath through the roller rinks of the region. His evenings were spent celebrating his victories with sing-a-longs and beach bonfires, the snapping of sap and Sam’s guitar as accompaniment.

He had even had the opportunity to disappear for four days, when he took a bus up to San Francisco and observe half of the first Gay Games. He’d seen Tina Turner perform in the flesh—from a great distance at the very back of a crowd, but in the flesh nonetheless—and he’d even kissed another boy. It was the fact of it more than the act that he cherished, since the boy had followed it up by asking if he wanted to “get a port-a-potty.” Blaine was all for free love, but he had some minimum romantic expectations for his first time, and not being locked in with a waste tank was one of them.

Blaine doubted there would be much of that in Ohio—opportunities for romance, Tina Turner, or even beaches to sing on. There was liable to be little freedom, either. It was as if his parents had realized how little they’d been parenting him while sorting out their financial situation, and now were trying to overcorrect. The way his mother talked, she was never leaving the house now that they actually had one again. She even made Blaine breakfast that morning despite waking up two hours after him, cheerfully chiding him for the coffee she caught him with and declaring that he needed a proper meal for his first day at school.

Blaine had only arrived in Ohio two days earlier; he hadn’t even finished unpacking his belongings. It had made finding the perfect outfit that morning especially stressful. Blaine left his hair alone a moment to flatten his best Members Only jacket, straighten his piano key necktie, and run his hands down his slimmest pair of stonewashed jeans. He wanted to make the perfect first impression. All of his west coast stylishness, but mindful of his new midwestern environment. He hoped to make friends, after all, and he didn’t want to attract the wrong kind looking like a preppy Republican.

It was hard leaving Sam behind in California. They had assured each other they would stay in touch, of course, but while Blaine would have loved to bust out his calligraphy pens, reading gave Sam some trouble, and they wouldn’t be able to indulge in long distance phone calls as often as they wanted.

Finally accepting that his hair wasn’t going to cooperate, Blaine snapped the compact closed with a sigh and slipped it into his schoolbag. He stepped out from behind the tree and faced McKinley High for the first time with a determined jut of his jaw. Right away he could see that it was different from the schools out west—while the hallways there were open to the outdoors, with only an overhanging to catch the rain, here everything was locked up inside the building to protect against more brutal weather. It was a simple change, but it already seemed more oppressive.

And that was probably why his hair wasn’t lying right, Blaine thought with a grumble as he crossed the parking lot. It was reacting to the change in weather.

Blaine heard the loud reverberating of an engine behind him. He hopped up onto the curb in front of the school and turned to spot the source, and his eyes landed on the most trippendicular moped he’d ever seen. It had a yellow body that shined nearly as bright as the chrome, and with the black seat and wheels it looked like an enormous wasp zipping into the parking lot. It pulled up next to the bike rack some ways from Blaine, but Blaine’s breath still caught when the driver unsnapped his helmet and lifted it from his head. Even at a distance he was a total stud. The guy swung his leg over the seat and disembarked, and Blaine’s gaze slid down the rest of him. His long legs were clad in spandex and knee-high boots with a scarf dangling from the waist, and Blaine was relatively sure he was wearing a women’s blouse under a black and gold Hussar-style jacket. Blaine couldn’t tell if it looked wicked because of the clothes themselves, or because of the body underneath that they hinted at.

The guy balanced his helmet on the handlebars and removed a can of hairspray from his bag. As Blaine watched, he leaned over and sprayed liberally while running his fingers through his hair. When he sat up straight again, Blaine could only gawk in envy: he’d turned his helmet hair into a flawless up do in a matter of seconds.

Damn, Blaine thought. There was a guy who really had his life together.

“Hey,” Blaine said before he had time to think. If he was gonna make a friend on his first day at a new school, it might as well be the best-looking, most bodaciously clad one there, he figured. He stepped forward into the sightline of the moped driver. “That ride is like, totally wicked.”

The guy looked pleased for a moment, head tilting as he took in Blaine’s appearance. Once again, Blaine cursed his hair for failing him at such an important moment. “Members Only,” the guy said, his voice higher than Blaine expected but liltingly perfect. “Tres chic. I’m impressed.”

“You know Members Only?” Blaine said, pleasure bursting in his chest.

“I do read Vogue,” the guy declared. Blaine grinned. 

“We should be best friends,” Blaine said, reaching out his hand. “I’m Blaine.”

“Kurt,” the guy replied, taking Blaine’s hand with something akin to suspicion. But still pleased. It was pleased suspicion, and Blaine could work with that. “And I’m sorry, but the role of Kurt Hummel’s best friend has already been taken.”

“By who?” Blaine asked, not letting the tiny bit of disappointment take root. He hadn’t become Southern California’s premiere rollerskater with a room full of ribbons and trophies by giving in to disappointment that easily. He was sure he could take down whoever the dude was who thought he got Kurt Hummel the best with nothing more complicated than a barrel roll.

“By them,” Kurt said, inclining his head to the entrance of the school, where a group of black-clad girls in pigtails stood. 

“Hummel,” the blonde in the center called. “Now, capiche?”

Blaine’s mouth dropped. “Are they—”

“Roller derby,” Kurt replied. “They rule the school. And so I must attend. Pleasure meeting you, Blaine.”

“No, you don’t get it,” Blaine said as he watched Kurt unlatch the most bitchin’ boombox Blaine had ever seen from the back of his moped. “I’m into roller bootin’ myself.” Kurt smiled but still moved to keep in the direction of the girls. Blaine hurried to keep up with him. “I’m the state champion in California in routines—”

“Hold up,” a latino girl said when Blaine and Kurt came to a stop in front of them. “Who’s this cheeto, Hummel? You get yourself a boyfriend, you closet disco queen?”

“Are you into disco?” Blaine asked excitedly. Kurt grimaced and the girls laughed loudly.

“Sit on it, Santana,” Kurt said. “This is Blaine. He’s new here.”

“He’s a sidewinder,” said the blonde in the middle. 

“I am not,” Blaine said. “I can do more tricks than—”

“No one cares about tricks, buddy boy,” the blonde said, putting her hands on her hips. “Not here. We’re about brawling. We’re about taking fresh meat like you and putting it in its place. Copacetic?”

Blaine pursed his lips. So much for midwestern hospitality. Not to mention at least three of the girls looked like they could make good on the threat.

Blaine jumped a foot into the air when a voice like a bomb going off shouted behind him, “GET YOUR ASSES TO YOUR CLASSES!” He spun around to see a women in a track suit standing less than a yard behind them, a megaphone in hand. Her eyes settled on him and narrowed. “Who are you, a spy? Trying to gain intel?”

“Uh…” Blaine said, his ears still ringing. “No?”

“You don’t seem too sure about that,” the woman said, regarding him with open and hostile suspicion. “I run a good, clean game, boy. Anyone you ask will say the same. And if they don’t they’re lying and you should report them to me with a full description and dossier.”

“I’m not a spy,” Blaine said more firmly, composing himself. “I’m new here. Oh! Could you—” he turned back to where Kurt had been standing, but the request to be shown to his first class died on his lips when he saw that Kurt, along with the pack of girls, had disappeared.

“I’ll escort you,” the woman said. She grabbed Blaine’s elbow in a vice-like grip before he could decline and dragged him into the school. Heads swiveled towards them as the woman charged down the hallway, and Blaine winced inwardly. This was not the first impression that he’d been hoping for.

“Room number?” the woman bit at him.

“Uh… J-hall,” Blaine said, taking a moment to recall. “Room 19.”

The woman turned a corner so fast he could’ve sworn he had whiplash and shoved him into an open door with enough force that he had to grab the teacher’s desk for balance. The teacher didn’t look alarmed, however, despite the loud, unexpected arrival. He merely looked from Blaine to the woman and asked, “Sue?”

“He claims to be a new student,” she said.

Blaine stood up straight and cleared his throat. He’d considered that he might have to introduce himself in his classes, but not like this. “Blaine Anderson?”

“Ah, yes,” the teacher said, glancing at the roll. “First on the list.”

“Alright,” Sue said grudgingly. “You get a pass this time, tiny.” She pointed to her eyes, jabbed her fingers at him threateningly, and then strode out of the room. Blaine stared after her, still not entirely sure what had just happened.

The teacher—Mr. Schuester, according to Blaine’s class schedule—heaved a much put-upon sigh. “You can take a seat now, Blaine.”

Blaine bobbed his head at him, scanned the room, and slid into one in the front. If people were going to stare at him, at least he wouldn’t have to see them turn around to do it that way. The girl beside him regarded him curiously, and two names into roll call Blaine learned that she was Tina Cohen-Chang.

She leaned in to whisper to him as soon as Mr. Schuester had noted her raised hand. “Don’t worry about Coach Sylvester. She’s paranoid ever since the Jesse Feint Jammer incident. She found him in her office looking for proof she was taking bribes.”

Tina blinked and then stumbled over her next words. “Sorry, you probably don’t—it’s like, a—”

“Roller derby thing, I know,” Blaine said, sinking into his seat a little more deeply. “They really do rule the school, huh?”

“You met the Doe-Eyed Divas already?” Tina said, leaning even closer. “Well, at least you didn’t get too reamed, by the looks of it. Your hair is far out.”

“Thanks,” Blaine said, brightening. “So you know the Doe-Eyed Divas?”

“Everyone does,” Tina said. “My one high school dream is to someday be a member, but they, like, refuse to let me try out, even just to sit on the bench.”

“So you know Kurt, then?” Blaine asked, freezing as Mr. Schuester caught sight of them chatting. Blaine waited for a bogus lecture but nothing came his way.

“Kurt’s their manager,” Tina said. “He makes all their costumes and stuff. He even helped to name them, which is so way cool. There’s Quinn—she’s the boss. She’s their Pivot, which is the most heavy position on the team, they make all the strategies and stuff. She goes by Qunatic.”

“Far out,” Blaine said, envisioning the blonde who had bitched him out earlier. That had to be Quinn.

“Then there’s Santana, or Santagonism,” Tina went on. “She’s the baddest member of the whole squad, she’s like, seriously scary.”

“Yeah, I met her,” Blaine said, remembering his brief encounter. 

“She’s the Jammer,” Tina said. “Which means she scores all the points. And she doesn’t let you forget it. Like, ever.”

“Who else?” Blaine said, thinking back to the rest of the girls surrounding him earlier. “There was a really tough lookin’ chick, bigger than the rest—”

“Lauren Zizes, aka Slicin’ Zizes,” Tina said. “She’s one of the blockers, along with Kitty Calamity—her name is really just Kitty, but no one ever calls her that—and Brittany.”

“What’s Brittany’s nic?” Blaine asked. Tina shrugged. 

“Brittany’s just Brittany. She says Wonder Woman doesn’t have a secret identity, so neither will she,” Tina answered. Blaine nodded and let a moment pass before trying again. 

“So about Kurt?” Blaine asked, but Mr. Schuester chose just then to be a bummer of the highest degree. He separated them into groups for group work, which left Blaine and Tina in different groups. Blaine was stuck with a total toker named Brett and a narc named Jacob. It wasn’t until the end of class that Tina got to answer Blaine’s question. 

“If you want to learn more about Kurt,” Tina said as they packed up their Trapper Keepers, “Come with me to the rink on Friday.”

“Right on,” Blaine said, grinning for a second before his face fell into a frown. “Wait, I’m not—not as a date, right? Because—”

“No, no,” Tina said, holding up her hands. “There’s someone I, like, like-like.” As she said this, her eyes shifted over in the direction of a tall, athletic looking dude. 

“He’s a fox,” Blaine said before he could help himself. “I dig it.” Tina’s eyes grew wide and she slapped her hand over her mouth.

“You can’t just say that!” she said, but her eyes said differently. “But he totally is.”

Blaine grinned, happy to have found a friend who seemed to get him in this place where no one else did. “Ten-four,” he said. “The rink on Friday it is. Be there or be square.”


	2. Chapter 2

Of course, getting to Friday took some effort. There were classes to adjust to and colder weather and his hair would just not cooperate no matter what he did. There were also parents. In addition to deciding to be a little more hands-on than usual, they also decided to introduce some new house rules.

“We failed your brother,” Blaine’s mother said. “We know that now. He can’t support himself, and that’s on us. We’re not going to make the same mistake with you. It’s time you got a job. From now on, if you want new cassette tapes or yet another pair of sneakers, you’re going to have to buy them with your own money.”

Blaine thought it was hardly fair to compare him to his brother, since there was a real future in competitive roller skating, but there was no use arguing. His mother drove him the mall, handed him some change for the bus ride home, and shooed him out of the car before he could ask for more.

Blaine wasn’t a mall rat. He loved new clothes, he’d spend an hour in a Sam Goody given the opportunity, and of course the food court was worth a visit, but ultimately Blaine prefered to be outside. He didn’t see the appeal of being shut in when he could be skating down the boardwalk.

But there was no boardwalk in Ohio, of course, so maybe he would have to reevaluate.

The first thing that struck him about the Lima mall was how much smaller it was than the ones back west. Stopping at a directory confirmed that it didn’t even have a movie theater or an ice rink in the basement level. It offered very little in terms of entertainment, in fact. At least they had an Orange Julius.

Blaine considered going to the arcade and seeing how far he could stretch his bus fare, but that had always been more Sam’s thing than his. Out of options and feeling a pang of homesickness, he decided he’d might as well do as his mother bade, and look for places that were hiring. He turned into the first store on his right, a mom and pop shop for video rentals.

It was small but brightly lit with fluorescent lights overhead and neon lights around the counter, which was directly to the right of the door. There was a banging mural of some cinematic highlights that wrapped around two walls of the store, miscolored just enough to avoid copyright infringement, with a pink Bruce surging up under a purple Death Star while the both of them were being whipped by an orange Indiana Jones.

The store was L-shaped, with the part past the counter blocked by a curtain, and there didn’t seem to be anyone in it—not even someone behind the counter. The former didn’t really surprise Blaine—videocassettes were still pretty new, even back in southern California. He didn’t figure many of the people around Lima had the kind of cash to buy a VCR. Still, the shelves were relatively stocked with the bulky, cushioned packages of a wide variety of movies, some of which Blaine knew cost at least $60 a copy. If they could afford those, they could definitely afford to hire him part-time.

He was a little surprised that there was no one out to supervise the merchandise, but as he rounded the corner to the curtained-off nook in the store and drew it aside, he discovered there was someone there after all. He had his back to Blaine as he approached. The lean frame looked familiar, but Blaine was too distracted by the sweet moves the guy was making as he had his eyes trained on a bulky television in the corner. Blaine recognized the movie—Fame. He’d seen it in the theater five times when it had come out a year or so back. What he’d assumed was the adult section of the store appeared to be sequestered musicals. He refocused on the guy in front of him just as he did a successful high kick.

“Lookin’ good,” Blaine said, drawing out the last word for a little extra emphasis. The guy lost his footing as he startled, spinning around to meet Blaine’s gaze. Blaine recognized him at once—it was the guy Tina was crushing on. “Hey, I know you!”

“What? No you don’t,” the kid said, and his eyes were wide. Blaine frowned.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure you’re in my homeroom,” Blaine said. “With Mr. Schuester? I just started yesterday. I’m Blaine.”

“Oh, yeah, you’re the new kid,” the guy said, and his eyes grew a little wild. “Hey.”

“I didn’t catch your name,” Blaine said. “But I’m serious, man, your moves are boss.”

“I’m Mike, but I don’t—you can’t say anything,” Mike said, looking a little panicked. A lot panicked, actually. “You gotta do me a favor, all right? No one knows that I—” Mike glanced around then, particularly at the door to the shop, which was still empty— “That I dance, you know what I mean?”

“Why? You’re killer,” Blaine said. “Man, you’ve got to get out on the rink, you must be bitchin’ on skates.”

“Nah, man, I don’t skate,” Mike said, with a fresh surge of panic. “I can’t—this is just a thing I do, for me. I don’t—”

“Hey, it’s cool,” Blaine said, reaching out a hand to rest on Mike’s shaking shoulder. “You shouldn’t be embarrassed, you’ve got some of the best moves I’ve ever seen. And I spent a lot of time on the boardwalk watching breakers.”

“Look, I’ll do anything,” Mike said. “Whatever you want. You can take any tape you want home for free. You don’t even have to rewind it before you bring it back. My parents pick all the movies so there’s not a lot of nudity, but we have The Shining—”

“Uh, no,” Blaine laughed. “No thank you. I just came in to ask about a job—”

“You’re hired,” Mike said immediately.

“I—” Blaine started, about to explain that that wasn’t what he meant, but reconsidered. This way he would get a chance to convince Mike he was wrong about skating and secure a part-time job, killing two birds with one stone. Although, if his parents ran the store… “Don’t you have to check with your parents first before hiring someone?”

But no, Mike said—his parents were early adopters of the VCR and had started a small, family chain throughout central Ohio malls, which brought their total number of stores to 3. They left Mike in charge of the Lima store when he wasn’t in school. Mike agreed to make Blaine the “Rewind Boy” a couple hours a day if Blaine agreed to keep Mike’s secret. 

It turned out to be unchallenging but very repetitive work. It was a good thing he already saw a lot of movies, because having the ending spoiled was the biggest hazard in this line of work—that and going stir-crazy sitting so long. Blaine could see why Mike, who clearly loved to move, had pawned it off on Blaine so readily. By Thursday he had Blaine reshelving and working the register, too, while he spent all of his time practicing moves that were mega flash. It didn’t seem right to hide that talent away in a rental shop, but Mike was insistent that he had to take over the family business when his parents retired, and then turn the chain over to his own children and do his part to establish the video rental dynasty his parents dreamed of.

“Okay,” Blaine said, alphabetizing in the curtained-off room while Mike did jazz hands. He’d decided that he needed a new approach. “Clearly it’s distracting you from the video business when you’re here,” he said. Mike paused in his spirit fingers, looking guilty. “You need to get it out of your system. You should come with me to the rink tomorrow. Just once.”

“I can’t,” Mike finally said. “Someone will see me and it’ll get back to my parents.”

“We can disguise you!” Blaine said eagerly.

“I don’t know…”

The bell at the front desk was rung with curt impatience. “Go take care of that, would you?” Mike asked quickly, glad for the conversational out. Blaine sighed as he swept the curtain aside—of course the store would be empty of customers except for when he was getting somewhere—but his annoyance evaporated when he saw who was standing by the register, a video tucked under his arm.

“Oh,” Kurt said, his cheeks turning darkly pink. “You’re not Mike.”

“I’m not,” Blaine said, grinning at his luck. He hadn’t spoken to Kurt since his first day, though he’d seen him every afternoon, blaring Bowie from his choice spot in the quad and buffered from all sides by the Doe-Eyed Divas. “I’m Blaine.”

“I remember,” Kurt said, fidgeting with the box under his arm. “Is Mike available? He usually helps me.”

“Mike’s busy at the moment,” Blaine said, leaning in what he hoped was an attractive manner on the counter. He wished for a moment that he’d unbuttoned all the buttons on his polo earlier, because it would be way too conspicuous to do it now. “I can help you.”

“You work here?” Kurt said, raising his eyebrow in what Blaine considered extremely attractive suspicion. 

“I do,” Blaine said. “And I am more than qualified to check out—” Blaine reached for the box under Kurt’s arm, just as Kurt moved to pull it away. It tumbled to the ground, landing face up. “An Officer and a Gentleman. Whoa, that’s out on video already?”

“Don’t you dare say anything,” Kurt said, scrambling to his knees to grab for it. “It is nobody’s business what movies I like to watch in the privacy of my own home.”

“Whoa, hey, relax,” Blaine said, putting up his hands. “Geez, what is the deal with people being so twitchy about their movie choices in this town?”

“If you must know,” Kurt said, placing the tape on the counter in front of Blaine with a loud clatter, “Romances are a guilty pleasure of mine.”

“Oh yeah?” Blaine said, reaching for the tape and checking it for damage. He didn’t see anything, but he wasn’t surprised—those cushioned tape boxes were pretty bouncy. “Well if you must know, I don’t have any guilty pleasures.”

“Yeah, right,” Kurt said, crossing his arms and looking distrustful. Blaine grinned. 

“It’s true,” Blaine said. “Everything I love, I love earnestly. Why should I feel guilty about something that gives me pleasure?”

“Oh,” Kurt said, his eyes widening. His mouth had dropped open into a soft oval, and Blaine suddenly realized that he had been successful in flirting with Kurt without even trying. The problem was, now that he knew he was doing it, he didn’t know what to do next.

Blaine put on his best show smile. He hadn’t known what to do in the spring semi-finals when he lost half his team to an accidental LSD dosing either, but he’d still nailed his improvised freestyling and gone on to win the gold. “So what do you look for in romances?”

Kurt smiled a little, seemingly unable to help himself. Emboldened, Blaine went on: “Dashing male leads? Chance encounters? Climactic public spectacles?”

And just like that, Kurt’s smile vanished and his body language closed up like a trap. “What I look for is a cashier who can check them out without commentary,” he said stiffly. “Can you go get Mike?”

“I can do it,” Blaine insisted, feeling stung and off-kilter from the sudden mood shift. He walked around the counter and scanned it, watching Kurt as Kurt avoided his eyes and pretended to be engrossed in finding exact change in his wallet.

“Are you not…?”

Kurt’s head snapped up. “Not what?” he demanded.

“Not out” was what Blaine was going to ask, but with that aggressive response he already had his answer. Kurt didn’t wait for the question anyway—he slapped the cash down on the counter, grabbed the box from Blaine’s hand, and stuffed it under his sequined jacket before his brisk departure.

Blaine sighed and put the money away, and then rejoined Mike behind the curtain. “So!” he said, trying to inject some cheeriness into his voice. “About the rink…”

“I can’t,” Mike repeated. “No offense, but I think anything you tried to disguise me in would just bring more attention to me.”

“Oh, come on, Mike,” Blaine said. “It’s a bunch of teenagers—who there is really going to tell your parents?”

“Kurt,” Mike said.

Blaine’s eyebrows furrowed. “Huh?”

“He’s blackmailing me,” Mike divulged. “If I tell anyone about… um…”

“The romances,” Blaine prompted.

Mike stared at him. “How did you know?”

“That was him just now.”

Mike’s eyes widened. “Shit! Oh, no, now he really will tell my parents—”

“Mike, cool out,” Blaine said, holding up his hands. “How does he even know your parents?”

“They go to the same grocery store,” Mike said, starting to pace. “Shit, how long ago did he leave, do you think I can still catch him—?”

“Take a beat,” Blaine said.

“You don’t understand!” Mike threw up his hands. “He… caught me once. Like you did.”

Blaine thought Mike should probably stop dancing in the store if he were so worried about it, but he kept that to himself.

“So he made a deal with me, that he wouldn’t tell my parents so long as I didn’t tell anyone about his rental history.”

“There’s a lot more spying and blackmail in this town than I expected,” Blaine said.

“He’s probably on his way to the market right now,” Mike bemoaned.

“I’m sure he isn’t,” Blaine said, patting Mike’s shoulder. “Look, if he blows your secret you have no reason not to blow his. If he has an issue with me knowing about his preferences, he’ll take it up with me.” Or completely avoid him. Blaine inwardly rebuked himself for coming on too strong, too soon.

“I guess you have a point,” Mike said, beginning to look reassured.

“I don’t get it, though,” Blaine said. “What’s it matter if you go to the rink or not, so long as Kurt’s agreed not to tell your parents?”

Mike looked at him like he was slow. “If I’m at the rink all the time, I’m not here for him to rent movies from, am I?” He hesitated, and then seemed to decided there was no point in withholding it from Blaine anymore. “He rents a lot of movies.”

“Well,” Blaine said, chewing on his lip in thought. “What if I convince Kurt to do something else that night?”

“Hah,” Mike said. “No way, Jose. Kurt is the rink. Without him, no one would be there. It was a totally square hang out before Kurt and the Doe-Eyed Divas took over. Now it’s the happeningest joint in town. He’s always there. When he’s not watching romances, that is.”

“For real?” Blaine asked, feeling more curious about Kurt Hummel by the second. “All right, then. If Kurt is at the rink, then he won’t be coming in to rent movies that night, will he?”

“I guess not,” Mike said, looking a little chastened. “I don’t know, though—”

“Tell you what,” Blaine said, reaching forward to grab Mike’s shoulder in what he hoped was a comforting move, “Since Kurt already knows that I know his secret, and he’s gotta figure I know yours, let me talk to him. Work something out.”

Make amends, Blaine thought to himself. Mike shook his head briefly, before switching suddenly to a slow nod. 

“Yeah, all right,” Mike said. “You go talk to Kurt. Good luck, though, man—he’s a tough nut to crack.”

“So I’ve noticed,” Blaine said.


	3. Chapter 3

Friday morning found Blaine in a struggle with his hair yet again. He’d sequestered himself in the least-used boys room, over in the science hall, where it always smelled a bit like rotten eggs. It had rained overnight, and the resulting humidity had made it even harder to feather his ends than usual, which was bogus because he had been hoping to look as foxy as possible when he approached Kurt. Blaine knew he was a pretty good-looking guy—and Kurt seemed like he might dig him already—but every little bit helped. He was tugging the ends into place the best he could when the bathroom door swung open. He was so focused that he didn’t pay any attention to the person who entered until they were right in his periphery, sliding a bottle of hairspray into his vision. Blaine glanced up and suddenly met Kurt’s eyes in the mirror.

“It’s anti-humidity,” Kurt said, nodding at the bottle. “It’ll keep your ends from frizzing out like that.”

“Thanks,” Blaine said, picking up the bottle as his heart rate picked up as well. He tested it out on his bangs, feeling the ends in satisfaction.

“I used to feather my hair,” Kurt said, reaching for a different bottle of hairspray out of his bag. “Now I just go for as much volume as possible.”

“So I’ve noticed,” Blaine said, smiling at Kurt’s reflection and feeling pleased when Kurt gave a small smile back. Blaine took a deep breath. “So, listen, Kurt—”

“We should talk,” Kurt said simultaneously, turning to look at Blaine. “About last night.”

“Yeah?” Blaine said, fumbling the hairspray bottle down. “Okay, cool. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, ya know, I just—”

“I’m just very defensive about—” Kurt rolled his eyes up to the ceiling, cutting himself off mid-sentence.  

“I get it, no, I do,” Blaine said. “I was like that myself at first.”

“Before you became earnest about your guilty pleasures?” Kurt said, smiling coyly. Blaine chuckled even as he frowned. He’d never considered it quite that way.

“Yeah, I guess,” Blaine said. Kurt huffed out a laugh.

“Well, maybe someday I’ll be like you,” Kurt said. “Able to admit that I like romance movies.”

Blaine blinked. “Romance movies. Right. That’s what we’re talking about.”

“What else would we be talking about?” Kurt asked. Blaine opened his mouth but immediately closed it, completely incapable of coming up with an answer. Finally, he blurted out, “Mike.”

Kurt frowned. “What about Mike?”

Blaine rolled his shoulders, already unimpressed by the lame way he was starting this conversation. “Mike wants to go to the rink tonight.”

Kurt raised an eyebrow. “He does?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Blaine said, and to his delight Kurt actually laughed. “He said you won’t let him, though.”

“Well that is not an accurate statement,” Kurt said turning back to the mirror. “Why would I not let him?”

“I know about your deal,” Blaine said, turning back himself and meeting Kurt’s eyes in the mirror once more. “I mean, considering I have a similar one with both of you it’s not that surprising.”

“Hmm, yes,” Kurt said. “But what do you get out of it?”

“I get a job,” Blaine said.

“Yes, but what do you want out of me?” Kurt said, and there was a moment of something that felt heated between them before Kurt glanced away.

“Tell Mike it’s cool if he hangs at the rink tonight,” Blaine said, and Kurt nods.

“It’s not like I ever rent anything on Friday nights,” Kurt said. “But I don’t know if it’ll make much difference.” Kurt turned back to Blaine, grabbed his hairspray, and shoved it in his bag. “Mike doesn’t skate.”

“He can’t?” Blaine asked as Kurt hoisted his bag up on his shoulder.

“No, he doesn’t,” Kurt replied. “It’s too close to dancing.”

With that, Kurt headed for the door. Blaine grabbed the anti-humidity spray Kurt had left behind.

“You forgot this,” Blaine said, holding up the bottle.

“No, I didn’t,” Kurt replied, and if Blaine didn’t know any better he’d swear Kurt winked before he swung his way out the door.

That was the last of Kurt that Blaine saw for the rest of the day. For the first time all week, however, the alluring Kurt Hummel was not foremost in Blaine’s mind. Friday had finally arrived, and Mike had given him his paycheck early, so there was nothing but a few hours of school keeping him from roller bliss. He’d even brought his skates so that he wouldn’t have to make a detour back home once the bell rang. He showed them to Tina during lunch, who made all the right impressed noises. She also stopped him when he almost gave in to the impulse to do a quick lap in the halls. “Sylvester would push you down the stairs if she caught you.”

Sitting through his post-lunch classes was excruciating. For the last five minutes he was sure that the clock wasn’t moving at all. But the bell finally rang, and Blaine ran out of the school with his skates in one hand and Tina’s elbow in the other.

Unfortunately neither of them had a car, but Tina revealed that Coach Sylvester had installed a shuttle service to get the Doe-Eyed Divas to and from the roller rink more efficiently, and had apparently turned it into a lucrative side business by charging non-team members for the privilege. Even splitting the cost they had to shell out ten whole dollars each, which was total highway robbery, but Tina just shrugged and said it beat waiting for the bus.

Blaine’s first impression of the roller rink was that it was smaller than the ones out west. It was located in the Leibowitz Strip Mall, between a Breadstix and a skating gear store, and Blaine was willing to bet that the prices at both were inflated. The sign over the entrance—“RinkyDinks”—had been bright red once upon a time but was now faded from years of sun. It had the same sort of old, sad look that seemed to Blaine to linger over all strip malls, and Blaine felt his excitement dim. He didn’t want to go around thinking everything was better back home—he didn’t even want to keep thinking of California as “home”—but Ohio seemed determined to disappoint him.

Then he walked through the doors, and just about had a religious experience.

The interior was the most bombdigity roller rink he’d ever seen. Blaine stood and gaped at his surroundings while Tina left him to go rent some skates. The lighting was perfect: dark enough to give it some romance, but not so dark that it felt seedy or claustrophobic. Three disco balls were lining the center of the ceiling, catching light from the spotlights and sending it spinning around the room. Tubular lights surrounded the disco balls like spokes of a wheel, each a different color and flashing on and off so that the light seemed to be making endless circles, spinning in the opposite direction as the balls. Neon lights were also mounted on the walls, surrounded by glittering reams of tinsel.

Whoever had decorated this place had totally radical interior design skills.

Most of the space was taken up by the rink itself, and although it wasn’t the largest that Blaine had been in, it was of a perfectly respectable size. Rental skates were available beside the entrance; the wall of worn skates was impossible to miss. There was a long pathway between the rink and the right wall, carpeted and lined with plastic benches. In the opposite corner was a station serving refreshments and a bunch of tables, and beside it were stairs leading up to a stage that was paneled with frosted lights.

A mega kickin’ rendition of “Is There Something I Should Know?” was providing the soundtrack for the skaters, and it took Blaine a moment to realize that it was actually being sung live, courtesy of the girl on the illuminated platform. “She’s amazing!” he enthused when Tina finally rejoined him.

“Isn’t she?” Tina agreed brightly. “We’re friends, actually; that’s Mercedes Jones. She’s the DJ here, but usually she just sings. I say this with admiration, but she’s a bit of a diva. If you want to get on her good side, all you have to do is bring her a drink during one of her breaks and compliment her.”

Tina nudged Blaine meaningfully. “She’s really close friends with Kurt, too.”

“Oh?”

“And Qunatic. They’ve been going to the same church for like forever and used to be best friends before like, high school and roller derby happened.”

Blaine glanced at her. “You know a lot about the Doe-Eyed Divas.”

“I keep looking for an in,” Tina said with a loud sigh, “but Mercedes says she wants to stay out of the ‘politics.’ That group is like impossible to get in with.”

Blaine felt a sympathetic pang that was as much for himself as it was for Tina.

“Anyway!” Tina said, clapping her hands together. “I believe you came here to skate?”

Blaine grinned at her. He quickly laced up his skates, and then they took to the rink arm in arm.

It was an instant relief to be gliding over the polished wood again, like diving into cool water or rolling down the window and letting the wind whip his hair. Only better, because both of those sensations paled in comparison to the dual feeling of freedom and control that a set of wheels under his feet gave him.

The only problem was, the rink really was packed. No one had been exaggerating about the popularity of the locale. If Tina and Blaine let go of each other, they quickly became separated by one or three other bodies. Blaine had spent all week reliving all his winning artistic moves in his mind, waiting for the chance to show them off in front of a new audience, but that was impossible here.

“Want a break?” Tina called over a couple’s heads, and for the first time in his life while on a pair of skates, Blaine found himself nodding.

They made their way back to the seating area; Tina went to get water, and while he was sitting there Blaine remembered to look around for Mike. He’d been irresolute enough about coming, and now that Blaine thought of it he’d spent the whole day at school avoiding him.

Blaine turned his head this way and that, but he didn’t see him anywhere. He wondered if the big crowd would scare Mike off, or give him a comforting sense of anonymity.

“Told you he wouldn’t show,” Kurt’s voice rang out from behind him. Blaine spun around, suddenly self-conscious about his pink cheeks and—oh god, his hair.

And of course Kurt looked impeccable in a satin blazer with powerful shoulder pads. “Hasn’t showed,” Blaine said, trying his best to act as cool as possible. “There’s a difference.”

“Hmm, technically,” Kurt said, “but no one plans to miss Mercedes’ set unless they plan not to come at all.”

“Who’s not coming?” Tina asked, having returned with two cups in hand. Blaine thankfully took the one she offered him and gulped down half of the ice water, hoping that it would cool off his flushed face.

He lowered his cup again with a refreshed “ahh” and said, “Mike.”

Tina nearly spat out her water on him. “Mike’s coming?!”

“No,” Kurt said.

“Maybe,” Blaine insisted. “The afternoon is young.”

“It’s almost five,” Kurt said. “And he won’t come after five.”

Blaine frowned. “Why’s that?”

“Back up,” Tina interrupted. “Why was Mike coming? How did you know about it?”

“I invited him,” Blaine said. Tina gave him an obvious “yeah, _and?_ ” look and he explained, “Well, we were working and I thought that he was such a good, uh, worker that he deserved a night off from the family business—”

“Are you saying that you work at the Chang’s rental store and you didn’t tell me?!” Tina exclaimed. “I could have been ‘visiting you’ in the shop every day!”

Kurt’s gaze darted between Blaine and Tina with a disconcerted look on his face. “Are you two…” His shoulders tightened and suddenly he sounded like he was a maître d': “Is this a couple’s skate?”

“What?” Blaine sputtered. “No!”

Kurt visibly relaxed as Tina smacked Blaine on the arm. “I can’t believe you didn’t warn me! God, and I’m wearing this outfit,” she bemoaned, looking down at her denim romper suit. “If I’d known I would have worn my best pair of spandex pants!”

“Don’t worry, Tina,” Kurt said. “He’s not going to show.” He looked down at his watch, a totally dope digital one, and said, “Speaking of shows, duty calls. Excuse me.”

Blaine didn’t get a chance to ask for any elaboration before Kurt was striding off toward the stage. Mercedes’ last note of “Love Hangover” came to a triumphant end just as Kurt reached his destination. She handed the microphone over to him, and they exchanged smiles and some brief words before she descended from the platform. Blaine wondered if he was going to sing. His speaking voice alone was so melodious that Blaine betted he would sound amazing.

Kurt licked his lips, painted-on a smile, and shouted into the mic, “Good evening, skate betties and homeslices! It’s five o’clock, and you know what that means.”

With a jolt, Blaine’s attention refocused from Kurt to the dance floor when he realized that the rink was clearing out. All of the skaters were streaming out of the small cut-out in the low wall that separated the hardwood floor from the rest of the building. Blaine tried to politely push through the crowd, feeling a surge of hope that maybe he’d get a chance to do some spins after all, but Tina grabbed his elbow and jerked him back after two steps.

“What are you doing?”

“Trying to skate,” he replied with a frown.

“You can’t skate _now_ ,” she said. “It’s five.”

“What does that have to do with it?” Blaine asked, as Kurt’s voice boomed across the room, “Let’s give some Buckeye State love to our champions, the Doe-Eyed Divas!”

The now-packed entrance and sitting areas burst into applause. Blaine craned his neck over the crowd to see the five girls take to the rink and begin a high-speed lap. Santana body-checked one poor slow soul who hadn’t quite made it off the rink yet as she passed him.

“See?” Tina said. “Five to seven the rink is theirs. Most people go home, or go next door for some dinner. Only groupies ever stick around—or derby hopefuls, like myself,” she was quick to clarify.

“But the rink doesn’t close at seven, right?” Blaine asked. “People can still skate after they’re done?”

“Sure,” Tina said. “People stream back in from Breadstix.” She gave him a sympathetic look. “Sorry, Blaine—it’s pretty much always like this.”

“It’s got to be empty during school, at least,” he said, already calculating how many classes he could skip without being held back for attendance, and how to keep his parents from finding out.

Tina shrugged. “Sure, it’s empty—it’s closed. This place was going to go under before it became the teenage hotspot. And Kurt doesn’t like to run up the electricity bill when no one’s here.”

Blaine turned to stare at her. “Kurt?”

“He’s the assistant manager,” Tina revealed. “Technically. But the woman who actually owns the rink is like perpetually drunk so he really has the run of the place.”

“Oh,” Blaine said, watching the girls take each lap faster and faster. They really were quite good, from what he could tell, but being good—even being the best—didn’t justify a complete monopoly. Access to roller rinks was a basic human right.

Kurt fiddled with some of the buttons on the stage, and then a karaoke track of “Hit Me with Your Best Shot” filled the building, and the Divas began to sing while they did their practice blocks and jams.

“Ooh, they’re singing!” Tina said excitedly. “They do that sometimes while they practice to get pumped up.”

They were very good, Blaine amended, as he hung back with Tina and watched them skate and sing. He would have enjoyed skating with any of them, but it was clear they weren’t going to make room for him on the rink.

So what were his options? Try to content himself with slowly weaving through a big crowd? He knew he’d never be satisfied with that. Find some other place to skate? He’d seen the state of the roads in Lima; that asphalt would ruin his wheels. Risk skating through the mall? He was pretty sure that he’d only be able to do that once before mall security caught him and kicked him out, and then he would be out a job, too.

As far as Blaine could see it, there was only one reasonable option: he would have to break into the rink after hours.

Now, Blaine didn’t believe in flouting all the rules and just living life however he cared to—that had gotten his parents evicted from three apartments during his childhood and nearly bankrupted them twice. But he also knew that there were times when laws ought to be broken, and this was one of those times.

Blaine was actually adept at breaking into roller rinks after hours. Back in California it had been part of his team’s pre-match ritual. All he had to do was wait an hour after closing, which was easy because Breadstix stayed open to catch the post-closing crowd for a nightcap. His parents’ recent demands that he always account for his whereabouts were easily appeased with a call from a payphone, telling them that he’d be working late. He was happy that they hadn’t yet invested in a VCR themselves, so there was no chance they’d swing by to visit and rent a flick and see that the mall had closed an hour earlier.

He jimmied open the service entrance after a couple tries, sliding in and closing the door behind him as deftly as possible. He’d broken into enough rinks in his time to know that the joint would likely still be illuminated by work lights, but it still made him sigh in relief to be able to see clear across the floor to the other side of the rink. He slid off his sneaks and walked in his socks all the way to the edge of the rink before he let his guard down. Then it was all about the skates. He was laced up, locked and loaded, and on the rink in seconds. Finally, Blaine felt like he could breathe.

He hadn’t skated properly in weeks, and his joints ached to warm up faster. He did a couple grapevines on his second lap, before shooting the moon just for fun. He was skating backwards when he caught the shadow of a figure out of the corner of his eye and suddenly his heart skidded, taking his feet with him. He hit the ground hard, spinning around until came face to face with an amused looking Kurt.

“We don’t get a lot of breaking and entering here,” Kurt said. “At least, not the kind here for the rink and not the petty cash.”

“I’m sorry,” Blaine said, his face burning. “I just—” Blaine trailed off, feeling ridiculous. Something in Kurt’s face, however, gave Blaine the flicker of hope that maybe Kurt might understand. “I miss it, y’know? Like, it’s hard enough being in this weirdo town with its weirdo trees and its bogus humidity and to not even be able to skate…”

Kurt turned then, walking away. Blaine pushed himself back up to a wobbly stand, before skating slowly to the edge of the rink. As soon as he hit the bars, the lights over the rink came on fully.

“What’s your favorite song?” Kurt called, though Blaine couldn’t quite figure out where he was calling from. Suddenly he saw him, over in Mercedes’ DJ booth.

Blaine had a lot of favorite songs; he wasn’t sure what exactly spurred him to say what he did.

“Ah! Leah,” Blaine replied. Kurt looked up, before nodding and returning to the turntable in front of him. Within seconds, the opening notes of the rockin’ guitar riff began filling the speakers surrounding him.

“You get one song,” Kurt’s voice sounded then, over the speakers. “I’d get skating.”

Blaine didn’t have to be asked twice. The beat of the song was steady, thumping through Blaine’s veins.

_Leah, it's been a long, long time.  
_ _Such a sight, you're lookin' better than a body has a right to._

Blaine glanced up to the booth, where Kurt was standing with his arms crossed and head tilted, watching Blaine.

_Don't you know we're playin' with the fire?  
_ _But we can’t stop this burnin' desire, Leah!_  

Blaine eased into a slinky serpentine circle. He was usually all about the precision, but something about Kurt’s gaze let something a little more funky fresh move into his limbs. He caught sight again of Kurt on his next circle around, and he couldn’t stop himself from starting to sing along, his eyes keeping Kurt in sight whenever he could.

_I see your lips and I wonder who's been kissin' them._  
 _I never knew how badly I was missin' them._  
 _We both know we're never going to make it,  
_ _but when we touch, we never have to fake it, Leah!_

Blaine immediately went into one of his most killer moves—a double toe loop. Most of the skaters on the competitive circuit in California preferred fancy footwork, but Blaine liked borrowing from his ice-skating homies and getting a little air when he could. The landings were different, of course, but Blaine was a sucker for a good landing.

The next time he caught sight of Kurt, he was pretty fucking sure he looked totally impressed.

The high from that realization drove Blaine through the rest of his most impressive moves. It wasn’t the most coherent routine he’d ever put together but he wasn’t going for that—he was going for maximum impact. By the end of the song he was out of breath, and breaking a bit of sweat, but it was totally worth it. He saw Kurt walking down the steps from the booth, right toward the edge of the rink. He was gonna kiss him, Blaine was sure of it. There was no way that routine could lead to anything else. Blaine skidded to a stop just in front of Kurt, grinning. Kurt gave him a small smile, then a nod.

“You’re good,” Kurt said. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

“I told you I was the state champion,” Blaine said, puffing his chest out with pride. Kurt nodded again. 

“Well, I hope that got it out of your system,” Kurt said, clearing his throat and crossing his arms, suddenly all business. Blaine blinked, confused by the shift. “Tomorrow the locks’ll be changed. Have a good night, Blaine.”

With that, Kurt left the railing and within seconds, the main lights were off, sending Blaine back into the work lights.

Kurt Hummel was proving to be the one landing Blaine couldn’t stick.


	4. Chapter 4

Saturday morning was basically a waste for Blaine. He worked for a couple hours, spending the whole shift giving Mike a hard time about ditching him the night before. After that, he rode his bike around the neighborhood, trying to burn off some of the pent-up energy he still had from his run-in with Kurt the night before. He got home around four, showered, and collapsed on the couch after pulling the TV’s on knob and flipping it to the first channel that came in clearly. It was a re-run of Bonanza.

He didn’t have any plans for the night, and it bummed him out. Part of him thought about trying to break into the rink again, but he was pretty sure Kurt wouldn’t be as cool about it the second time. He thought about looking Kurt’s number up in the phone book, but he didn’t know his dad’s first name, and they only had the single rotary phone in the kitchen and nowhere that he could stretch the cord far enough to have some privacy. He wondered if he could convince his parents to put a second phone in his bedroom if he kept his grades up.

He wondered what his mom was making for dinner.

“Don’t put your shoes on the sofa, Blaine, seriously,” his mom said as she entered the room from the hallway. “We’ve talked about this.”

“You never cared before,” Blaine said, but sat up anyway, swinging his feet to the ground.

“That is because all the furniture we had in California was hand-me-downs,” Summer Anderson replied, still struggling with the earring she’d been attempting to put in since she’d walked in. “We’re trying to be real adults now, Blaine, we even have a La-Z-Boy.”

It was then that Blaine took in what his mom was wearing—the new pastel powersuit she’d picked up at the mall the previous weekend. “So I see. Nice shoulder pads.”

“Thank you,” she said. “Does it really look okay?”

“It looks totally hip, Mom,” Blaine said, sitting up. “What’s the occasion?”

“Your father and I have been invited to a fondue party,” Summer said. “I met this woman at the grocery store, Carole Hummel—”

“Hummel?” Blaine said, trying his best to look cool, like his heart rate hadn’t suddenly exploded. “Kurt Hummel’s mom?”

“Well, I think so—she said she had two sons, just like I do,” Summer said. “She said one of her sons was particularly good with food and he’d sent her to the store to do the shopping for the party and he’d given her this extensive list of cheeses she didn’t recognize and so I helped her out, since I know so much you know, after working at that cheesemonger when your dad was between jobs.”

“Kurt’s going to be at the party?” Blaine said, his palms suddenly sweating. Summer shrugged her very impressive shoulders.

“It sounds like maybe,” she replied. “Is this a friend of yours from school? You didn’t tell us you’d made friends already, Blaine, that’s wonderful.”

“Can I come?” Blaine said, suddenly standing up. “To the fondue party?”

“Oh, you don’t want to come to a stodgy old fondue party, Blaine,” she said, moving toward the front hall.

“Yes I do,” Blaine said. “I don’t have anything else to do, and you said Kurt will be there, so I won’t be the only kid or anything.”

“You hate fondue,” Summer said, sitting in the chair that sat near the front of the door and reaching for her pumps.

“I love fondue,” Blaine said, rolling his eyes. His mom looked at him. “Okay, I’m trying to love new things.”

“All right,” Summer said with a sigh. “If you can be ready in ten minutes, you can come.”

“Thanks, Mom!” Blaine said, bursting forward with a quick kiss to his mother’s cheek before running upstairs.

Blaine tore into his room and pulled open his closet door. He spent most of his time in jeans, polos, and converse, but he did have a nice collection of khakis and button-downs for the right kind of occasion. Like meeting the parents, theoretically. He pulled out his best pair of khakis—the ones that made his ass look especially bodacious, if he did say so himself—and a madras plaid summer shirt. He topped it all with a tennis sweater tied over his shoulders and slipped his sockless feet into some penny loafers. A quick check of his feathered edges—that hairspray Kurt had given him had really worked magic, he had to admit—and he was ready to go.

The drive to the Hummels’ house wasn’t very long, Blaine was happy to find out—it was totally bikeable—and pretty soon, he found himself at Kurt Hummel’s door. Summer stopped her husband from ringing the doorbell, fussed with her top one last time, and then nodded. “Okay.”

Until that moment Blaine hadn’t thought about what sort of parents Kurt might have, but the woman that opened the door didn’t surprise Blaine at all. Her hair wasn’t that big—just a standard perm—but she was totally decked out in acid wash denim. It was no wonder such a rad guy like Kurt Hummel had such a cool mom.

“Summer! So glad you could make it, oh, come in, come in,” she said, sweeping the door open. Blaine stepped into the front hallway. To the left were a flight of stairs, leading up to—Blaine assumed—the bedrooms over the garage, and to the right was a divider made of glass bricks.

“This is my husband, Dic—I mean, Richard—and my son, Blaine,” Summer introduced, and Carole shook both of their hands in turn. Blaine smiled winningly at her, but Carole gave him a little concerned frown in return.

“Oh, Blaine, I hope you won’t be bored.”

“I’m sure I won’t be,” Blaine enthused. “I love dinner parties.”

He’d never actually been to one, but he wasn’t opposed to the idea at least. His mother smiled at him for the fib. Probably because it implied that dinner parties were something his family was familiar with, rather than meandering through a concert parking lot and buying hot dogs out of car trunks.

“The party’s out on the patio right now,” Carole said, leading them around the glass wall and through the living room. Blaine was immediately confronted with pale pink walls and cabbage rose chintz couches as poofy as marshmallows. The room was lit with track lighting, and on the walls were framed pictures of geese. It looked like the quintessential midwestern home, and Blaine could guess that his mother was making mental notes. Adjacent to the living room was a smaller space that didn’t contain much more than a piano, and Blaine could feel himself light up when he saw it. He was rather fond of the instrument, but the only one he’d ever had access to was the one in the music department back in California.

Beside the piano were sliding glass doors leading to the back yard, and Blaine could make out the partygoers through the vertical blinds.

“We’re having drinks before dinner,” Carole said. “Blaine, we have some pop, if you’d like?” She gestured toward the open door on the other side of the piano, which led into the kitchen. The walls were papered with more of the flower pattern, and the surfaces were a bright red formica. Strewn across them were cookbooks, brass cookware, and plates of cut up bread and meat.

“No thank you,” Blaine said politely. He didn’t see Kurt standing around in the backyard, nor in the kitchen. “Is Kurt here?”

“Oh, do you know Kurt? Of course, you must be about the same age. He must be in the pantry, getting the cheese,” Carole said. She turned to Summer and Richard and smiled. “Go, join the party! I’ll be out in a second.”

They slipped through the sliding glass door while Blaine followed Carole through the kitchen. “Kurt!” she called.

Kurt backed out of the pantry with an armload of cheese. “I’m right—”

His eyes fell on Blaine and widened. “—here.”

“I think you know Blaine, the Andersons’ son,” Carole said.

“I do,” Kurt said. His sentences were short and sort of stunned, but he was doing better than Blaine, who was still speechless.

Blaine had seen Kurt in a lot of Vivienne Westwood-esque clothes (if not the genuine articles) in the past week, so Blaine knew that he at least liked the new wave aesthetic, but that hadn’t prepared him for Kurt Hummel in a kilt. He also had on elaborately styled boots that went up so high they stopped somewhere above the hem, and a leather jacket that was decorated with a series of belts.

“Then you have a friend here to entertain you, splendid!” Carole said, taking the cheese from Kurt’s arms. That seemed to jerk Kurt out of his daze. He broke eye contact with Blaine to turn to her and frown.

“What are you doing?”

“Why don’t you two go up to your room? You don’t want to spend your Saturday night hanging out with a bunch of parents. I’ll call you when dinner is ready.”

“But I have to...”

“Oh please, Kurt, I can shred some cheese and melt it in a pot,” Carole chuckled.

“It has to be—”

“Added slowly, yes, I remember.” She unloaded the cheese on the counter and then waved a spoon at them goodnaturedly. “Get going.”

Blaine thought that Kurt might keep trying to argue that he needed to stay downstairs, but to his surprise he turned and headed towards the staircase with a backward glance at Blaine. Blaine hurried after him.

Kurt’s room was decorated very differently from the rest of the house. The walls were white, and one entire wall—the closet doors, from the look of it—was covered with sheet mirrors. It was full of Chippendale furniture, and he had a tiny Pye TV set hooked up to a VCR. “Wicked!” Blaine exclaimed when he saw it, and Kurt smiled faintly. He’d leaned back against the door after he closed it, watching Blaine as he looked around the room, and he hadn’t moved away yet.

The only place to sit was a chair in front of the vanity, so Blaine—feeling bold after having been freely let into Kurt’s room—sat down on the bed. It sloshed underneath him, and Blaine laughed with delight.

“You have a waterbed!”

Kurt looked like he was trying to look neutral. “You like it?”

“I used to have one,” Blaine told him. “A hand-me-down from my brother. It popped, though.” He looked up quickly. “Which wasn’t my fault! I promise I’m not going to ruin your bed.”

Kurt’s smile widened, and Blaine leaned further back on the bed, enjoying both the rocking sensation and being able to make Kurt look like that. “My brother got one really early on,” he continued. “Did you know the guy first called them ‘the pleasure pit?’”

Kurt took a step away from the door. He fiddled with his jacket a moment, running a finger around one of the decorative buckles on his jacket.

“Do you want to listen to some music?”

“Sure,” Blaine said, sitting up again.

Kurt’s boombox was resting beside his TV set. He knelt down and opened the cabinet below them, revealing rows and rows of cassettes. Blaine was a tad disappointed that the kilt draped in such a way as to completely obscure his backside. “My mom said you have a brother?” Blaine asked while Kurt looked through the cassettes. He wanted to know if anyone was liable to barge in on them.

“A step-brother,” Kurt said. “He’s at Corcoran’s Actor Workshop Colony right now. It’s this retreat thing where he’s supposed to learn intensive method acting, or something.”

“Cool,” Blaine said.

Kurt shrugged. “Maybe. The woman who runs the camp, her daughter was the one who suggested he go. None of us can really tell if he’s being hustled or if actors are just weird.”

“My brother has a lot of actor friends,” Blaine said. “They’re total weirdos.”

Kurt stood up again, having selected a cassette, and removed it from the case. “I don’t know what kind of music you like.”

“I’m sure anything you pick is fine,” Blaine said, trying—and he was sure, failing—to look seductive on the edge of the bed. Kurt put the tape into the player and rewound it for a few seconds before pressing play. A glam rock guitar lick began unfolding through the speakers. It was… decidedly not make out music. Blaine tried to not let that discourage him. It would probably be conspicuous if someone heard “Up Where We Belong” coming from the room. And it wasn’t bad music, of course. It was familiar-sounding to Blaine, but he wasn’t sure he knew it.

“Oh, is this Bowie?” Blaine asked when the vocals started. “I love Bowie, man. I saw him play once—”

“It’s not Bowie,” Kurt said. “It’s Mott the Hoople.”

“It sounds like Bowie,” Blaine said, frowning. “Doesn’t it?”

“It was written by Bowie,” Kurt explained, still hovering on the edge of the bed but not sitting down. “He was a big fan of theirs.”

“Why do I know the name Mott the Hoople?” Blaine asked, before it hit him. “Oh, yeah, Andy Mackay played with them on their album.”

“Andy Mackay?” Kurt asked. Blaine nodded.

“Yeah, yeah, from Roxy Music,” Blaine said. “He plays saxaphone.”

“You like art rock?” Kurt asked, looking more open in his expression.

“Duh,” Blaine said, rolling his eyes. “Roxy Music is the bombdigity. I’m kind of obsessed with Bryan Ferry,” he admitted. “One day I’d like to meet him and just… shake his hand. Or high five him, that would be classier.”

Kurt smiled then, and Blaine grinned back. He decided to push his luck, just a little. “You can, uh, sit down, too, ya know.”

“Oh,” Kurt said, his eyes widening, taking in the waterbed. He then nodded resolutely. “Yeah, all right.”

Kurt put his knee on the edge of the edge; it gave under his weight and the resulting wave knocked Blaine slightly off-balance. Kurt paused, and Blaine worried that he was going to back off, but then his hands came up to his jacket and he began to unfasten the belts that kept it pulled tight around his trim torso. He kept his eyes down at his chest while he did it, although from the neatly skillful way his fingers went from one fastening to the other, Blaine was sure that he could have done it without looking. Two buckles in, Blaine realized that he was holding his breath; he couldn’t help but conjure up certain images while he was sitting there watching Kurt undo a half-dozen belts.

Once they were all hanging loose Kurt peeled the jacket off of his arms, and… wow. He wore so much elaborate outerwear that Blaine hadn’t been able to get a good sense of what his arms actually looked like, and now Kurt was kneeling (okay, half-kneeling) in front of him in just a simple t-shirt, and his arms looked great. They were attached to great shoulders, which were attached to a great chest.

“I avoid wearing anything metal in bed,” Kurt said by way of explanation for the impromptu stripshow, and tossing the jacket over the back of his chair.

“Uh-huh,” Blaine said as Kurt brought his other knee onto the mattress.

They both fumbled for a bit, and finding their balance brought them right next to each other, close enough to be uncomfortable—or very, very comfortable. Blaine could feel Kurt breathing on the space between his upper lip and nose. He’d never been so aware of a patch of skin in his life.

“Why did you come over, Blaine?” Kurt asked.

Blaine considered a glib answer, like, “fondue sounded better than the TV dinner my parents would have left me with,” but so far that evening Kurt had been surprisingly… “Bare” was the only way that Blaine could think to describe it, but admittedly his brain wasn’t trying very hard to divert thoughts away from _bare arms bare arms bare arms_. Regardless, the remoteness that had been present in all of their other encounters was gone now, and Blaine decided to repay Kurt in kind.

“I wanted to see more of you.”

Kurt drew in a breath. Blaine couldn’t tell if it was a surprised intake or a gathering-resolve intake. Maybe both, because Kurt’s next words were lower—quieter, deeper. “How much more?”

Blaine swallowed. His brain was completely unhelpful, running a loop of _oh god oh god oh god_. “I think you’re the most excellent dude in all of Ohio,” he said, defaulting to honesty when clever lines failed him. To Blaine’s great, great relief, Kurt ducked his head and an adorable flush began to fill his cheeks as he grinned. He looked up at Blaine from under his eyelashes for a moment that seemed to stretch out forever, and yet was not nearly long enough to prepare Blaine for when he leaned through that last bit of air and pressed their mouths together.

It was—a little awkward. Kurt’s lips were pursed, a lot, but they were also pressed tight together. His neck was stiff and his face was tense. Blaine slid his hands up either side of Kurt’s neck to loosely grasp his face and tilt it so that their noses weren’t getting in the way. He stroked at Kurt’s cheeks until his jaw unclenched, and kissed him softly until his mouth was moving naturally against his.

And then it got really good, _really_ fast.

Kurt went from receiving to pursuing in one heart-thudding moment. He wrapped his hands around Blaine’s wrists and kissed back with more force, more hunger, and the momentum toppled Blaine onto his back. The waterbed caved underneath his weight and then lurched him back upward, and for a moment it was almost like Kurt was lying on him. But, no: he was still kneeling on the bed, and not even straddling Blaine. The change in position had knocked their kisses off-center, and Blaine’s legs squirmed, trying to get some traction with his heels on the smooth cotton comforter and push himself into a more natural position. All he seemed to be succeeding at was making them both bob on the resulting waves, but then Blaine’s knee brushed up against Kurt’s thigh, and bunched the kilt up with it, and Blaine saw bare skin above Kurt’s fricking high boots.

Blaine stopped breathing for a minute. He was sure that he’d never gotten so hard so quickly in his life and it seemed to have the equal and opposite effect of turning his brain into mush. He didn’t realize that he’d stopped kissing Kurt back until Kurt drew away with a wet _swak_ and a furrow between his perfectly sculpted eyebrows.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” Blaine croaked, and then cleared his throat. He drew his knee up higher, slowly, the hem piling up on his knee and baring more of Kurt’s pale, naked thigh, and he waited for Kurt to stop him or—not stop him.

Kurt’s hand closed on Blaine’s knee. Blaine thought he was going to push it away, flatten down his kilt, maybe even get off the bed; but instead, Kurt locked eyes with him and slowly slid his hand down, up the inseam of Blaine’s khakis.

Blaine’s breath left him like a punch and he looked down. If he’d been wearing his usual jeans, the ones that were so tight there wasn’t anywhere for a boner to _go_ , he probably would have looked less obscene than he did in that moment, with his pants obviously tented and his legs parting on instinct. Kurt’s hand paused halfway between Blaine’s knee and groin, and when Blaine looked back up at him he watching Blaine was anxious uncertainty.

Blaine surged up again, intent on allaying any doubt that he was so, so okay with Kurt’s hands on him. He dug his fingers into Kurt’s hair for a hold as he kissed him fiercely, and Kurt returned the gesture with teeth and tongue. The bed rocked their bodies in an imitation of the way they’d move if they were fucking, and that thought made Blaine dizzy. Kurt’s hand dropped from his left thigh to his right, pushing it further apart, and then he was clambering to get between Blaine’s spread legs. When he dropped between them the waterbed jolted Blaine back up, and Blaine had to let go of Kurt’s lips to moan as his cock rubbed against the hard front of Kurt’s thigh. Kurt’s forehead thunked against Blaine’s and his breath came out in hot pants against his mouth, and Blaine tightened his grip on his hair to keep his hands from trembling.

Kurt shifted his knees, dipping the bed, and then he slid down Blaine’s body, and then—

Blaine choked on a whine that threatened to escape. Kurt’s cock was pressed up against his. Kurt’s _hard_ cock. Blaine didn’t know when or how that had happened—well, no, he had some inkling of how, he just didn’t know if it had been the kissing or the hair-pulling or the sight of Blaine straining his threads that had set him off. Not that it mattered when Kurt was working his hips against Blaine’s with small, experimental movements; the whole mattress undulating underneath them, with them, as their cocks rubbed together.

The knowledge was more arousing than the actual feeling when they were both still fully dressed. Blaine silently cursed himself for picking such a rough fabric, and he let go of Kurt’s head. Kurt leaned away a little, his expression glazed, as Blaine fumbled to undo the buttons of his fly. Once he had, he pulled the flaps aside, flipped up the hem of Kurt’s kilt, and tugged him back down on top of him.

They both let out loud moans that were thankfully covered up by the music. Kurt’s cock felt so much hotter, harder, _bigger_ when there was only underwear separating them. It was easier to press them closer, tighter—to line them up and drag.

Kurt shuddered above him and ground his hips down harder. Blaine bucked up against him, his self-possession fraying. Kurt buried his face in Blaine’s neck and Blaine kissed the only thing he could reach, Kurt’s cloth-covered shoulder. Kurt wrapped his arms around Blaine’s lower back, tilting his pelvis, and Blaine muffled a wail when Kurt rubbed up against the underside of his cock. His hands clawed up Kurt’s back, one of them getting under his shirt and slipping up the sweaty groove of his spine. He was so close. He was so, so—

“Boys!” Carole’s voice hollered from down the hall. “Dinner time!”

Kurt sprung off of Blaine like he’d been electrocuted. He snatched up his jacket and was out of the door before Blaine could even think about catching his breath. He stayed there for nearly a minute, his brain buzzing and his body confused, before he collected himself enough to gracelessly stumble off of the bed.

Blaine did the only thing that made sense; he staggered into the bathroom across the hall and came into a wad of toilet paper. He washed his hands, splashed water on his face, straightened his sweater, and went downstairs, where the party was collecting around the dining table.

Carole put Kurt and Blaine beside each other with such cheerful certainty that neither of them could have declined without everyone noticed the discordant note. Blaine wanted to… he wasn’t sure, exactly. Hold Kurt’s hand under the table? But the Hummels had a glass top table, and Blaine couldn’t even press his foot against Kurt’s without the possibility of someone noticing it between the plates.

Blaine listened as the adults made conversation around them, answering questions when they were directed at him and listening for any bid toward conversation Kurt made in his direction. He felt clumsy; the long fondue forks were awkward in his hand, and he kept dropping bread cubes in the cheese that he couldn’t figure out how to retrieve. He wasn’t sure if he’d had more than a handful of small bites before the meal was over.

His mom was right: he hated fondue.

Still, the meal being over meant the adults headed back to the den for Brandy Alexanders while Kurt ran straight to the kitchen to start the clean up. Blaine trailed after him.

“I’ve got it,” Kurt said when he entered the room. “You can go drink virgin Alexanders with the finest of Lima’s society.”

“It’s not a virgin _Alexander_ I’m into,” Blaine said, moving closer to the sink where Kurt had taken up residence. “In fact, I’m pretty sure the guy I’m diggin’ isn’t a virgin at all, after—”

Blaine gasped as a spray of water hit his chest, right under the knot of his tennis sweater. Kurt’s eyes were wide and determined. His hand was clenched around the faucet spray nozzle, aimed directly at Blaine.

“Boys,” Carole said as she walked into the room, before pulling to a stop. “Oh goodness, Blaine, are you okay?”

“I’m so sorry,” Kurt said, though Blaine was pretty sure he didn’t sound sorry at all. “My hand slipped.”

“Blaine, honey,” Blaine’s mom said as she, too, entered the room. “Your father’s ready to head home.”

“Let Kurt get you a dry shirt,” Carole said, already grabbing one of her floursack towels to attempt to dry off Blaine’s chest.

“It’s fine,” Blaine said, trying to make eye contact with Kurt instead and failing. “It’s just water.”

“We don’t live far,” Summer said, joining in with Carole’s attempts to dry off Blaine. This was not the kind of petting he’d been hoping for when he walked into the kitchen. “We’ll get him home and he can change there.”

“We’re so glad you guys could come,” Carole said. Kurt turned a shade pinker, which no one else seemed to notice. “Especially since the boys are friends. We should do this again sometime.”

_Yes we should_ , Blaine thought to himself, looking at Kurt. Just minus the hot cheese and cold water and moms part, maybe.


	5. Chapter 5

Blaine was nothing if not resourceful. True, he had forgotten to actually listen and catch what Kurt’s dad’s name was while they were at the party and he’d definitely failed on actually asking Kurt for his number, but he wasn’t above using his mom for intel. He waited until mid-Sunday, when Summer and Richard headed out to go yard saling (a habit they’d found hard to break), to make use of the information he had. He pulled out the white pages, looked up HUMMEL, BURT, and circled the phone number he found there before dialing the rotary phone and waiting for it to begin ringing.

“Hummel residence,” a gruff, male voice said. Kurt’s dad, Blaine figured. Right. He remembered him—a big, burly man dressed in plaid and denim.

“Hi, sir,” Blaine said, as brightly as he could manage. “Is Kurt available?”

“This is Burt,” the man said. “Who’s this?”

“No, I’m sorry, I’m looking for Kurt,” Blaine said, twirling the phone cord around his finger. “This is Blaine Anderson.”

“You’re the kid from last night, right?” Burt said, sounding suspicious.

“Yes, sir,” Blaine replied.

“You gotta cut it out with that sir crap, kid, it’s driving me bonkers,” Burt replied. “Anyway, Kurt’s not here. He’s off with those rollerskating girls again. They’ve got a match or something.”

“Oh,” Blaine said. “At the rink?”

“Nah, it’s out of town,” Burt answered. “Kurt won’t be back ‘til late. I’ll tell him you called, though.”

“Oh, okay, thanks,” Blaine said. Burt hung up before Blaine realized he hadn’t given Burt his number.

It came as no surprise, then, that Blaine didn’t receive a phone call back that night. He tried not to let it bother him. He went into school on Monday determined to find Kurt and to get him to agree to a conversation—at the very least, he wanted to apologize for being so jive with their parents around because that was so not cool, he knew. Kurt was clearly not out, and it wasn’t his place to force it.

If he got a few extra kisses out of it, well, Blaine wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Kurt’s moped was in its usual parking spot when Blaine got to school, but Kurt himself was nowhere to be seen. Blaine did run into Tina and Mercedes, however, almost immediately. He found them engaged in an intense discussion outside of his homeroom class.

“What’s shakin’, bacon?” he asked as he approached. Tina looked over her shoulder at him, and rolled her eyes.

“I’m not talking to you,” Tina replied, turning back to Mercedes, who was eyeing Blaine quizzically.

“Do I know you?” she asked, tilting her head slightly.

“This is Blaine,” Tina replied. “He’s new.”

“Oh, you’re the new kid,” Mercedes said. “Kurt mentioned you.”

“Oh, yeah?” Blaine asked, gripping the strap of his Jansport backpack a little tighter. “What’d he say?”

Mercedes only laughed, which did nothing for Blaine’s self-confidence. “Maybe new kid here is the answer to our problems.”

“I don’t know,” Tina said, glancing over at Blaine. “I’m pretty sure he’s not the prog rock type.”

“Pffft,” Blaine said, rolling his eyes. “I totally am.”

“You don’t even know what prog rock is,” Tina said.

“I totally don’t,” Blaine replied. Mercedes snorted.

“Like Rush,” Mercedes said. “We’ve got tickets to go see them on Thursday.”

“Oh, right on,” Blaine said. “Just you two?”

“No, we were supposed to be going with Kurt and Qunatic but she just bailed on the three of us,” Mercedes replied. Blaine felt his interest in the subject suddenly grow ten times. “We’re stuck with an extra ticket.”

“I love prog rock,” Blaine said. “Especially Rush.”

“Right, it’s prog rock you love,” Tina said. She crossed her arms. “I’m not sure I feel like being your wingman, after you so completely failed at being mine.”

“Aww, be nice, Tina,” Mercedes said. “At the very least we’ll get back our twenty dollars.”

“Fine,” Tina said. “You can come.”

“Radical!” Blaine exclaimed, bouncing on his toes. “Where’s the show?”

“Columbus,” Mercedes answered. “We’re taking Tina’s brother’s van—it has fold-down seats—and we’re gonna crash for a few hours in the back with sleeping bags before we drive back for classes on Friday morning.”

This concert was sounding better and better all the time. “I am definitely going to this concert.”

“You are not going to this concert,” Blaine’s mom said eight hours later as she washed lettuce for salad.

“You were geeked out this weekend that I was making friends at school,” Blaine said, leaning against the counter. “I’ve gone to dozens of concerts before, what’s the big deal? Do you think I won’t be safe on the mean streets of Ohio suburbia?”

“You already started the semester late,” Summer said, placing the lettuce on a cutting board and chopping it with decisive strokes. “You’re not missing more school—”

“But we’re not going to be missing school!”

“—for a band you don’t even like,” she finished. “And you can’t promise that, Blaine. What if you oversleep, or the car breaks down?”

“It’s impossible to oversleep in parking lots,” Blaine said. “Everyone’s always up with the sun. And the van isn’t going to break down, Mom, it’s not like it’s a rust bucket.” Actually, Blaine had no idea the state of the van in question, but he wasn’t about to admit that when a chance to spend more, relatively private time with Kurt was on the line.

Summer fixed him with a look as she tipped the cutting bowl over the salad bowl and scraped the cut lettuce into it. “Don’t act like this is the same as going to some Huey Lewis and the News concert with Sam. It’s not appropriate for you to be spending the night with a couple of girls.”

Blaine pursed his lips. That’s what he got for being honest about his company. “There’s going to be four of us in one van, Mom. Do you think we’re going to have an orgy?”

“Blaine!” she chastised. Blaine ducked his head, though he was more sorry about that hurting his argument than he was about actually saying it.

“I don’t even like girls,” he reminded her.

“Young people don’t like all sorts of things when they’re young,” Summer said, turning and busying herself with the salad. “When I was young I thought I was changing the world by not going to the beauty salon.”

Blaine rolled his eyes behind her back. The worst thing about having reformed hippies for parents was their insistence that one day he too would get tired of his “rebellion,” as if that were the reason his head turned when he passed studmuffins.

Summer turned back around, and he quickly schooled his expression into one that was more beseeching.

“Oh no,” Summer said, moving to the sink to wash her hands. “Don’t you dare try to pull those puppy dog eyes on me, mister. Go set the table.”

Blaine did as he was told, but the activity just made him feel grumpier. He stomped into the kitchen once he was done, a little embarrassed by his petulance but too far gone to stop.

“Blaine,” his mom said. “Stomping isn’t going to make me change my mind.”

“No, why should it?” Blaine said. “Why should it make you question your bogus arbitrary rules you made up just now? Even though you let me do the same thing last year and I didn’t die or knock anyone up?”

“Blaine Devon,” Summer said, but he was on a roll.

“It’s not enough you make me pack up and move across the country during my senior year to the middle of nowhere in Ohio,” Blaine continued. “Then you make me get a job and you make me check in and have family dinner and now you won’t even let me make friends because you’re so worried what the Jones’ next door will think of you.”

“Are you done?” Summer asked, crossing her arms in front of her. Blaine exhaled the rest of his anger into a gust of nervousness.

“Yes,” Blaine said.

“All right,” Summer said. “Point number 1: The next door neighbors are the Millers. Point number 2: Family dinners still stand. Point number 3: This is an exception, not a rule, because you’ve been through a lot the past number of weeks and you’ve taken it like a champ.”

“What?” Blaine asked, feeling excessively confused.

“You will not miss school on Friday even if it means you have to walk all the way from Columbus,” Summer continued. “You will call when you get to Columbus and you will call when the concert is over and you will call when you leave Columbus. I don’t care how long it takes you to find a payphone. I will give you a whole roll of dimes; you can call collect if you have to.”

“Okay,” Blaine said, his hands trembling in excitement.

“Finally,” Summer said. “You will not share sleeping quarters with the girls. I want you to preserve whatever sense of propriety still exists and be a complete gentleman. You and Kurt will sleep separately, by yourselves.”

Blaine couldn’t stop himself from grinning. “That won’t be a problem.”

Bolstered by his success in convincing his mom to let him go to the show, Blaine approached Tina on Tuesday with a renewed vigor.

“You’re totally right,” he said when he slid into the seat next to her in homeroom. “I’m a bogus wingman, I’m sorry.”

“Go on,” Tina said, not sparing him a glance. Blaine made sure Mr. Schue wasn’t watching before making his move.

“Come in to Chang’s tonight,” Blaine suggested. “I’ll make it up to you with some dedicated one-on-one wingman action.”

“I don’t even own a VCR,” Tina hissed back, but he could tell she was considering it.

“That’s okay,” Blaine said. “You can rent one.”

Blaine wasn’t sure if Tina would show, but as it turned out she was already there when he arrived, spying on the store from behind a hacky sack kiosk.

“This is like, the least cool way you could handle this,” Blaine said as he came up behind her. She spun around, her pigtail hitting Blaine squarely in the face as she did so.

“You were supposed to be here to be my wingman,” Tina hissed, giving her best glare in his direction.

“Cool out,” Blaine said, shrugging his backpack off his shoulder. “I got this.” He linked arms with her and dragged her along as he moved over toward the counter. “Hey, Mike!”

Mike ducked out of back room with a look of annoyance on his face. That look quickly melted when he saw Blaine arm-in-arm with Tina, though Blaine couldn’t quite make out what Mike’s new expression was. Recognition? Confusion? Did Blaine maybe detect a little jealousy?

“Mike, you know Tina, right?” Blaine said, giving Tina a little shove toward Mike. “She’s in our homeroom.”

“Yeah, right on,” Mike said, suddenly looking a little flustered. “I mean, hey.”

“Hi,” Tina said, giving a small wave.

“Tina likes movies,” Blaine said. He knew it was a totally lame line, but Mike didn’t seem to notice. “She wants to rent a VCR and some super duper fly movies and I said, you know who knows movies? My main man Mike.”

“I do know movies,” Mike replied, and Blaine hoped beyond hope that he didn’t look quite that dopey when he looked at Kurt.

“I’ll leave you to it,” Blaine said, and hastily made for the rewind machine.

When Blaine finally left the mall for the day, Tina was still there, chatting away with Mike. The glow of young love was the only thing shining, however—he stepped out into a drizzle. Blaine stopped short, still under the shielding over the mall entrance, and stared at the wet pavement. He’d noticed the gray sky that morning, of course, but he hadn’t thought it would actually rain so early in the year, and he was without an umbrella or a hood.

He stared until he was shoulder-checked by someone trying to get into the mall, who grumbled something that Blaine was sure was a less-than-flattering comment about him. He rubbed the sore area and decided he would just have to jog to the bus stop; luckily, it was only a block away. The metal bench was too cold to sit on so he remained standing, shifting his weight from foot to foot as the cold started to seep in through his clothes. He stuffed his unfortunately ungloved hands into his armpits and hunched his shoulders, trying to curl in and preserve as much heat as he could.

He’d thrown on a jacket that morning, but apparently what counted as bundled up in California didn’t cut it for mid-fall in Ohio. Annoyance crept in with the cold. It wasn’t even really raining. It had no right to be this cold.

Blaine kept pulling his hand out from his armpit to quickly check the time, and when the posted time for the bus to arrive came and went he groaned in frustration. He needed to get himself a car. Or at the very least some better-insulated clothes. Leg warmers sounded really good right about then.

Blaine’s head jerked up when he heard the whir of an engine. Not the sound of the approaching bus, but rather the rumble of a moped, and not just any moped, either. Blaine stared after Kurt as he zipped past, feeling as though his heart had suddenly jumped up into his throat. It was the first time he’d seen Kurt since the party, despite his best efforts to track him down at school, and he hadn’t realized just how much his avoidance stung until he actually saw Kurt rushing away from him.

Half a block away Kurt made a wide U-turn, and Blaine’s eyes widened as Kurt turned around and slowed down until he came to a stop beside the curb.

Kurt’s hands wrung the handlebars for a moment before he cleared his throat and said, “Hey.”

“Hi,” Blaine said breathlessly, suddenly feeling much warmer.

“You’re just standing out here?”

“The bus is late,” Blaine said, arms tightening around his torso.

Kurt’s bottom lip caught on his teeth in a moment of indecision, and then he said, “Get on. I’ll give you a ride home.”

Blaine’s stomach swooped. “Really?” he asked, already taking a step forward.

Kurt shifted on his seat. “Yeah. You can keep my back dry. You live near me, right?” Blaine nodded. Kurt unlatched his helmet, took it off, and held it out. He looked flushed. Blaine liked to think that it was because of him, but knew it was probably due to driving in the cold. “Well?”

Blaine grabbed the helmet, latched it under his jaw, and threw a leg over the moped.

It was a vehicle that had definitely been made for one. Kurt slid as far forward as he could but Blaine still felt like he was in danger of falling off the back. Blaine figured that Kurt had to have known it would come to this when he made the offer, so he didn’t hesitate before he scooted in as tight against Kurt’s ass as he could, thighs squeezing tight around Kurt’s thighs. Figuring out where to put his feet was a little tricky, and he ended up hooking his heels on Kurt’s shins.

God, Blaine hoped that the bus didn’t arrive. He grasped Kurt by the waist. “Okay.”

Kurt swallowed. “You have to hold on tighter than that.”

Blaine squeezed Kurt hard enough that he could feel out the flesh underneath Kurt’s ski coat.

“No,” Kurt said, “put your arms around me.”

Blaine had never been happier about unreliable public transportation. He looped them low around Kurt’s abdomen and molded himself against his back. He nosed past Kurt’s collar and buried his face in his neck, and for a moment he wasn’t sure if he was happier about being able to touch Kurt that way, or for the source of heat.

“Your neck smells good,” he murmured.

Kurt’s shoulders tensed, and then relaxed. “Thank you.”

Blaine took a deep breath, partially to fortify himself and partially because Kurt really did smell good. A moped ride seemed as good a time as any to have a conversation about what had happened at the fondue party. At least they knew they wouldn’t be overheard. “We should talk—”

Kurt hit the gas with a sudden jolt and Blaine’s limbs tightened around Kurt, suddenly more interested in holding on for dear life than in talking. The entire ride to his house was spent with his heart going crazy on a cocktail of anxious adrenaline and thrilled titillation from the necessary intimacy of the ride. He would have appreciated the vibration of the moped between his body and Kurt’s more—specifically his crotch and Kurt’s ass—if he didn’t feel like his own ass were threatening to tip him off the back of the moped. Kurt called for directions when he turned onto his own street, and Blaine pressed his mouth against Kurt’s ear when he answered him.

Kurt came to a stop at the corner of Blaine’s block. “It’s the fifth house down,” Blaine said.

“You can walk that far,” Kurt said, shifting and essentially nudging Blaine off of the moped with his ass. Blaine stumbled off onto the sidewalk and took stock of himself. He was sufficiently warmed up, thanks to fifteen minutes spent plastered against Kurt’s body and his heart, which still hadn’t calmed down. His cock was similarly excited, and he was willing to bet Kurt was in the same state. For a minute he considered inviting Kurt inside, but his mom was home, and he didn’t want to recreate the problems from the party. Which they still hadn’t talked about.

Blaine could take a hint, though: Kurt didn’t want to talk about it. At least not yet. Blaine reminded himself that it had only been three days, which really wasn’t that long, even if it felt like forever to him. He could try again on Thursday.

“Thanks for the ride,” he said.

Kurt colored and looked away— _around_ , actually, but the weather was just unpleasant enough that no one was outdoors watching them. He reached out and touched Blaine’s neck, and Blaine’s breath caught—but then his hand moved to unsnap the helmet’s buckle and take it from him.

“Don’t mention it,” Kurt said pointedly as he jammed the helmet back on his head. He made a sharp turn and sped away, but Blaine still felt buoyed. He was sure, now, that Kurt hadn’t stopped thinking about him any more than he had stopped thinking about Kurt.

At the very least, Kurt had to think about him every time he got into bed. Smiling at the thought, Blaine walked the short distance home, still wrapped up in Kurt’s lingering warmth.


	6. Chapter 6

Thursday arrived with very little fanfare. Blaine packed his overnight bag that morning and hauled it (and his sleeping bag) on the bus to school with him, where it took up residency in the bottom of his locker for the rest of the day. He didn’t bring a ton—change of underwear, socks, deodorant, a clean polo, his travel toothbrush, and a couple rubbers Cooper had given him before he’d left California, just in case. He didn’t think there was much chance of him getting to use them, piled into the van with two nosey girls as they were, but the thought of being in the position to need them and not having them made his heart clench in horror. He was taking a gamble in not bringing his blow dryer and round brush, but it was a calculated one: there weren’t going to be outlets in the parking lot and they weren’t going to be showering, and his hair could usually handle one night of unwash before getting unruly.

Blaine wasn’t sure whether Kurt realized he was taking Qunatic’s place, but he figured Tina or Mercedes had to have mentioned it by now.

His theory was confirmed when he headed outside at the end of the day to the pre-arranged meet-up stop outside of the back of the school, near the student parking lot. Kurt was there already, his Louis Vuitton bag in front of him on a bench, his Chanel shades on his face.

“I heard you were joining us,” was what he said as Blaine approached. “I didn’t peg you for the prog rock type.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” Blaine said, and man, he thought that would sound cooler than it did. Luckily, Kurt’s response was obscured by the sound of a van pulling up to the roundabout.

It was the jivest van Blaine had ever seen, and he’d seen a lot of jive vans on Venice Beach in his time. It was painted pink and purple with constellations and bodacious glittery swirls. There were dice in the mirror and curtains lining the back windows.

“If the van is a-rockin’, don’t come a-knockin’,” Blaine said.

“I swear this van has herpes,” Kurt said, reaching for his bag.

Tina and Mercedes had already taken up residency in the front seats, leaving Kurt and Blaine the back bench seat to themselves. Their bags filled the rest of the back, which was carpeted and had incense holders attached to the sides.

“I cleaned it thoroughly before we took it,” Tina declared. “After he cleaned it first. It has been double cleaned. I’m telling you this because you’ll be sleeping back there, the two of you. Mercedes’ and I will get the fold down front seats.”

“Fine,” Kurt sighed. “Your chariot awaits, monsieur.”

Blaine couldn’t help feeling a little flustered by Kurt’s gentlemanly gesture any more than he could help bending to get into the van in such a way that it put his ass prominently on display.

The ride to Columbus was shorter than Blaine expected and mostly filled with Mercedes and Tina filling him in on the gossip of McKinley students he didn’t know and didn’t particularly care about. Kurt chimed in from time to time, adding wry anecdotes here and there that made everyone convulse with laughter. From time to time, Kurt made a reference—to a song, a movie, a bit of pop culture—that neither of the girls seemed to get. Blaine got every single one, laughing each time. His whole chest filled with warmth at the look of pride and fascination that came over Kurt’s face when he laughed at his jokes.

Tina asked him about his own experience with concerts back in California, and he told them about a couple of the open-air music festivals that had inevitably ended with his brother exposing himself on stage. “There’ll be none of that tonight,” Mercedes assured him.

It didn’t take long before they were pulling into the long line of cars waiting to find parking in the massive dirt lot. After parking they took the time to set up the van for sleeping (“We won’t want to do it when the show is done, better to do it ahead of time,” Tina pronounced) by folding down the bench seat in the back and spreading out the pillows and sleeping bags into four vaguely bed-shaped areas—two in the front seats for Tina and Mercedes, and two in the back, for Kurt and Blaine.

After that, the only thing left to do was make their way into the venue. Tina passed out the tickets, and they got in line with the rest of the crowd. Blaine felt distinctly out of place among the t-shirted, long-haired, weed-scented crowd. He tugged on the hem of his pastel-striped polo and noticed a sneer on the face of the greasy-haired dude to the right of them.

“Ignore him,” Blaine heard Kurt mutter to his left. “He clearly wouldn’t know fashion if it hit him the face. It would get tangled in his hair, first.”

Blaine snorted back a laugh, feeling much better already.

There was a bank of payphones just outside the gate, and Blaine stopped to make his first check-in call to his mom with the first of the dimes he had stored in his fanny pack (Kurt had cackled when he first caught sight of Blaine’s fanny pack—apparently they hadn’t caught on in Ohio yet, like they had in California). The opening band was starting by the time Blaine was done, and he hurried to catch up with the group heading in toward the stage.

The opening act was a fairly standard garage rock set, and Blaine bopped his head along in time for a couple of tunes. They were off stage in as little time as they were on it. At that point, the energy in the crowd shifted. Groups of people began pushing closer to the stage, sucking out even little air pocket that existed in order to close the gap between themselves and the performance space. As the lights dimmed low to signal Rush’s entrance, the crowd began to percolate with excitement, growing louder by the second until it finally exploded into a harmony of light and sound as the band began playing.

It wasn’t that Blaine didn’t appreciate experimental music—of course he did. It was just that he appreciated style and glamour a whole lot more than he appreciated synthesizers. And if the first two songs in their set were anything to go by, Rush was 80 percent synthesizer. And drums. Why were there so many drums in that guy’s kit? The stage was like, half drums.

Blaine had his walkman in his fanny pack. He’d put it in with his roll of dimes on the off chance that one of his van-mates was a snorer and he needed some more dulcet tunes to fall asleep to. He wondered if he could slip his headphones on and listen to his favorite mixtape without Tina and Mercedes noticing. He didn’t want them to think he was a total stick in the mud. But they’d pushed ahead of him with the rest of the crowd, and given how focused they were on the stage, he doubted they’d turn around at any point. He unzipped his fanny pack, pulled out the headphones, pulled them on so that the metal band was hugging the back of his neck rather than flattening down his hair, and he’d just plugged them in to the walkman when a finger hooked on the back of his headphones and dragged them down. Blaine jumped and grabbed at them as he spun towards his assailant, and his hand brushed against Kurt’s as Kurt retracted it.

“Oh,” Blaine said, a little flustered. He hadn’t realized that Kurt was so close to him. Kurt had one eyebrow cocked, but he didn’t seem offended or otherwise judgemental. In fact, he looked a little amused.

He leaned in closer so that Blaine could hear him. “What were you saying about being the prog rock type earlier?”

“It’s… a lot of synthesizer,” Blaine said when he couldn’t bring himself to call it “good.”

Kurt gave him a private, if-Blaine-wasn’t-mistaken- _flirty_ smile that made his stomach flip over. “And drums,” Kurt said, which caused a warmth to spread into Blaine’s chest. Kurt got him. Kurt plucked at the cord that was dangling in front of Blaine’s chest and rolled it between his fingers. “You want to go back to the van? Listen to this without the background noise?”

Blaine nodded eagerly and let Kurt lead him along by the cord. Kurt elbowed his way out of the crowd with panache, and soon enough they were stepping out of the arena and back into the open air, the sound cutting immediately. The sun had set since they’d gone inside, and the temperature had dropped with it. Blaine shivered once and wrapped his arms around himself, and Kurt’s hand dropped away. Blaine stepped closer to him and they both began to walk, traversing the parking lot that was now filled with cars but still felt empty for its lack of other people. It was peaceful, walking alone with Kurt. More so than Blaine had expected, being alone with someone that he wanted to get horizontal with as much as he did Kurt.

The van was clear across the parking lot, outside the extreme halo of lighting around the arena, but the night sky was bright enough that navigating the parking lot wasn’t an issue. “Why did you come?” Blaine wondered. “If you don’t like the music, I mean.”

Kurt shrugged. The fingers of his hands were tucked into the tight front pockets of his leather pants, making his elbows stick out. Blaine almost wished it were darker so that he could have a pretense to slip his arm through Kurt’s and walk that way. But most of all he wished that Kurt didn’t need pretenses for that kind of stuff.

“I don’t get a lot of time with Tina and Mercedes. Tina especially.”

“You could change that,” Blaine pointed out. “Tina really wants to be a Doe-Eyed Diva.”

“Tina just wants to be popular,” Kurt dismissed. “She doesn’t really want to get in with those girls.” He was silent for a few more feet and then added, “Sometimes it’s easier to keep certain parts of your life separated from certain other parts.”

Blaine smiled at him, feeling a pang of sympathy. He wanted to tell him that he shouldn’t have to hide any part of his life, but before he could work out the right thing to say, Kurt asked, “What about you?”

“I can fit in anywhere,” Blaine told him.

Kurt gave him a sidelong glance. “I meant, why did you come?”

“Oh,” Blaine said, gazing back at him. “I still want to see more of you.”

Kurt, surprisingly, didn’t break eye contact. Blaine stopped walking and Kurt stopped as well after a beat, turning back to face him.

“I’m sorry about the fondue dinner,” Blaine said.

Kurt cleared his throat. “We can just forget it.”

“I’m not going to forget it,” Blaine asserted. “But I’m sorry for talking about it while the parents were all in the other room.”

Kurt was eyeing him with a cagey expression. Blaine hoped that his own was as earnest as he felt. “I’m not going to blab about you to anyone.”

“Not even Tina?”

“Well,” Blaine allowed, “she knows I like you. But I haven’t told her what happened between us. And I wouldn’t ever.”

Kurt rocked on his heels. “I believe you.”

Blaine broke into a huge grin. “Yeah?”

“I know you haven’t told Tina, at least. She wouldn’t be trying to sell you so hard if she knew.”

Blaine smiled at that, touched by her consideration.

“She and Mercedes—they were my closest friends. Before the rink. I trust them more than most people.”

“I do like you,” Blaine repeated, looking up into Kurt’s clear eyes. “I’ve liked you since I first saw you. Everything since has been kinda serendipitous.”

Kurt smiled, reached out, and snagged the bottom flap of Blaine’s jacket. “It’s cold out here,” he said. “Let’s get to the van.”

Between the old shag carpeting and the unrolled sleeping bags, the back of the van was plush and almost cozy. With no windows on the sides, as soon as they shut the door behind them the only meager light came in from the back and the front, which backlit Kurt and made him glow like a soap star. They settled with their backs against the cushioned wall, knees raised, and Blaine let his lean against Kurt’s.

“What cassette did you bring?” Kurt asked.

Blaine unzipped his fanny pack and pulled his walkman out again. “It’s a mixtape, actually,” he revealed, holding down the rewind button. “It’s got all of my favorites on it. Some Bee Gees, ABBA, Diana Ross—”

“So a bunch of disco,” Kurt interrupted, though he seemed more charmed than contemptuous.

“The other side has the more Billboard Hot 100, if that’s more to your taste,” Blaine flirted. He popped the tape out and turned it over, and then fumbled to get his headphones off from around his neck. It took some twisting, but he managed to get the left headphone to his right ear and the right headphone to Kurt’s left. Kurt reached up to hold his into place, and they leaned against each other, Kurt’s knuckles pressing into the back of his hand. He clicked play, and “The Sweetest Thing (I’ve Ever Known)” began to play between them.

Halfway through the song Kurt’s pinky reached out and hooked around Blaine’s pinky, and Blaine didn’t even try to tramp down his grin.

When it ended and “Ah! Leah” began, Kurt sucked in a slow breath.

“You were amazing, on the rink,” he said quietly, and Blaine beamed.

“Thank you.”

“The way you move…”

Kurt trailed off and Blaine waited; he was so concerned about disrupting Kurt’s train of thought that he even held his breath.

Kurt let go of the headphone and turned, rising onto his hands and knees beside Blaine. “Blaine…”

Blaine dropped the headphones as well and they landed with the thump on his squishy down sleeping bag. The music played on, very softly. Blaine’s own heart sounded louder.

Kurt leaned in and Blaine met the kiss halfway. Kurt’s hands came up to cup his face and he hovered over him, pushing Blaine’s head farther back as their lips slid against each other with the soft, surprisingly sweet sucking sound that eager kissing produced. Blaine’s hands came up to grab Kurt’s elbows, and then at the flaps of his military-style jacket. He pulled, but the buttons were too wide to simply pop free.

He leaned away and Kurt’s mouth followed him, sucking Blaine’s bottom lip between his own. Blaine moaned and squirmed and had to press a hand against Kurt’s sternum to give himself a moment to breath and recollect. Kurt sat back on his knees, and Blaine stroked at the triangle of triangle of bared skin above his dress shirt and remembered what he’d been after. “Can you take this off?” he asked, fisting the edge of the jacket.

Kurt pulled the silver-dollar buttons from the eyes and dropped it behind him. They came together again, more feverish than before, and Blaine shifted around until he was on his knees as well, then grasped Kurt by the neck and the waist and propelled them so that they were lying side by side.

Each kiss came harder and faster than the one before it, quickly building to a frenzied pace that made Blaine’s heart race and his hands cling at Kurt’s shoulders and back, seeking out something solid to hold onto. Kurt’s legs squirmed; his foot slipped out from under him on the nylon of the sleeping bag, and his other knee bent and rolled forward atop Blaine’s own. Kurt grabbed his hip as an anchor as he wiggled closer, until they were pressed mouth to mouth, chest to chest, crotch to… fanny pack.

Kurt’s leg flexed as he ground forward, rubbing into it, and he broke off kissing with a dissatisfied grunt. “Can you…”

“Yeah,” Blaine said, already reaching for the strap. The problem was that he didn’t want to sit up to take it off, because that would mean pulling away from Kurt’s body half-wrapped around him, but he was lying on the buckle. He tried lifting his hip and reaching underneath it, but the sleeping bag was so slippery and he couldn’t see what he was doing so he ended up flopping around like a fish. When he finally got it off, he tossed it away with more force than he usually would have and turned quickly back to Kurt, hoping that he hadn’t ruined the moment.

Kurt tugged at the lapel of his coat. “This too? And, uh,” Kurt’s face was visibly flushed even in the dark van, but he still said it, “will you please take your shirt off?”

“Yes,” Blaine said immediately. He did sit up then to pull his jacket off his shoulders and his polo over his head. He met Kurt’s eyes again once he’d disrobed and grinned at the somewhat amazed expression there, puffing up a little from pride. It was a first for him—being looked at like that by someone who wanted him just as much as he wanted them—and it felt amazing.

Kurt sat up too, like he was irresistibly drawn, and reached out a curious hand. His fingertips connected just below Blaine’s ribs, five little points of contact that made Blaine’s nerves riot, and Kurt trailed them down, feeling out Blaine’s flesh. Blaine had a fleeting moment of wishing that Kurt hadn’t started with his softest part, but then Kurt slipped his hand around his waist and rubbed his fingers over the dimple at the base of his spine, and it was all Blaine could do not to grab Kurt’s hand and shove it down the back of his jeans.

Kurt slid his hand up his spine instead, and then laid both on his chest and felt out the contours there: the subtle definition of his pecs, the way they hollowed into his armpits, the line of his collar bone, the dib above his sternum. All with the sweetest look of awe and concentration on his face that was almost better than being kissed.

Almost.

“Kurt,” Blaine said, and Kurt snatched his hands back with a blush.

“Sorry,” he said, looking at Blaine’s face and then down at the van floor. “I’ve never gotten to touch before.”

“Don’t be sorry!” Blaine said quickly. He grabbed Kurt’s hands and put them back on his chest, and Kurt smiled a little when he did. One of his thumbs brushed over a nipple experimentally and Blaine’s eyes fluttered closed before he made himself refocus on Kurt’s face. “You can touch me however you want,” he said emphatically. “Just kiss me too?”

Kurt leaned in, and the first few kisses were as exploratory as his hands had been, but soon he’d regained the fervor from before. Blaine’s hands slid up Kurt’s arms to grab and knead the muscle of his biceps. Kurt licked at the space between Blaine’s parted lips, but as soon as Blaine opened wider and slid his tongue up to meet him, Kurt leaned backward with a nervous giggle.

“Can we…” Kurt tugged on Blaine’s torso rather than finish the question, leaning backward and guiding Blaine down on top of him with his hands spread over his ribs. He unfurled his legs as he went and Blaine ended up between them, Kurt’s feet planted on either side of his knees while he bracketed his arms over Kurt’s head.

“You feel good,” Kurt murmured against his lips.

Blaine grinned. “So do you.” Granted, the decorative ammunition belt that was digging into his belly was a little cold and uncomfortable to lie on, but Kurt’s torso was warm and firm under his sheer shirt, and his leather pants were buttery soft. Blaine shifted his hips so that he was lying more comfortably, and Kurt gasped when his cock pushed into the smooth groove of his hip bone.

Kurt pressed his hands down, pushing Blaine down tighter against him. And back onto the string of bullet casings, but Blaine didn’t mind as much when Kurt kissed along his jaw.

Kurt’s hands moved suddenly from holding his back to grabbing his ass, and then Blaine _really_ didn’t mind. His hips jerked, humping down hard, and Kurt whined. One of his legs lifted and wrapped around the back of Blaine’s, and he pushed up as Blaine pushed down, his hip bones digging into the cushion of Kurt’s spread thighs. Blaine’s cock rubbed up against Kurt’s and his head swam as he realized that, while he was well on his way there, Kurt was already very much there. It was immensely flattering and gratifying. Blaine tilted his mouth down to kiss Kurt; Kurt’s tongue rubbed against the seam of Blaine’s lips again and this time Blaine let Kurt slid it into Blaine’s mouth before he met it with his own. Kurt kissed him generously and ungently, limbs squeezing around Blaine as he tried to both rock up into Blaine and hold Blaine down tightly against him.

It was the hottest thing that Blaine had ever conceived of, until he ducked his mouth lower to seize the skin of Kurt’s neck between his teeth and draw it up and Kurt gasped, “Blaine.” Blaine choked back a whimper and reached a hand down to rub it up and down Kurt’s thigh, trying to placate the desire to just stuff a hand down Kurt’s trousers and jerk him off until he came all over him and—oh, God.

Kurt squeezed his ass. “I want to—please take these off?”

“Yeah,” Blaine gasped, “yeah, yeah—”

Blaine scrambled to get up; speed made it a graceless affair, and he nearly fell back on Kurt in the process. He unzipped his fly and shimmied out of his jeans and underwear in one motion, sitting back so that he could peel the denim from his legs. Then he had to stop and take off his sneakers to get them off his ankles, which was mildly embarrassing. Blaine ducked his head, the awareness of Kurt’s eyes on him making the laces that much harder to unknot, but he finally managed it and kicked shoes, pants, and underwear off all together. After a beat, he peeled his socks off too.

There was really no chance of Blaine striking a seductive pose with anything resembling grace or subtly, so he went with flagrant obscenity instead and let his legs sag open. He glanced up at Kurt, who’d propped himself up on his hands, and swallowed thickly; with his rumpled shirt and his cock swollen against his left thigh, the shape of it distinct where it stretched the leather, Kurt looked like a Playgirl photo spread.

The difference being, the pictures in Playgirl didn’t stare back the way that Kurt was staring at Blaine: eyes wide and disbelieving and fixed on his naked cock. The urge to cover up niggled at the back of Blaine’d mind as Kurt continued to stare silently and Blaine grew more and more aware of how much more naked he was than Kurt.

“Can—” Blaine cleared the croak from his voice and got onto his knees, and he could hear Kurt suck in a breath when he leaned back into his space. He lightly rested his hands on Kurt’s knees and licked his lips. “Can I see you, too?”

Kurt wordlessly nodded, but he made no move to do anything but continue to stare at Blaine, so Blaine quickly removed Kurt’s belt and unfastened Kurt’s fly himself. Kurt raised his hips an inch when Blaine tugged at the hem, getting it off his ass and down his hips.

Blaine couldn’t help a small whimper when he saw that Kurt wasn’t wearing underwear. Kurt’s cock was magnificent, and even when it wasn’t being pinned down by the restricting leather the weight of it tipped it over so that it was lying against Kurt’s abdomen.

It wasn’t the first that he’d ever seen—the aforementioned Playgirls—so he’d thought that he’d been prepared for this; that he at least knew what to expect. But there were things that the page didn’t communicate: the heat radiating from it, the way it rose and fell with Kurt’s abdomen, the smell even, musky and unassumingly carnal. Blaine didn’t even have Kurt’s trousers down past his knees before he swayed forward and licked it, his tongue sliding from the middle of the shaft up and catching on the ridge of the head.

Kurt gasped and grabbed his shoulders, his legs jerking under Blaine’s hands. Blaine closed his lips around the end and sucked, dizzy with the way that his lips drew it in and the way it flattened his tongue. He drew his lips in and then relaxed them a few times, moving Kurt’s cock in and out of his mouth just a fraction each time, and even just that was so good that Blaine was aching to hump against the sleeping bag and come in a second. Kurt was whining above him as his legs squirmed uncontrollably; Blaine could barely hold on to them.

Blaine tried to sink his mouth down farther, but Kurt’s hand dug into his hair and he pulled him off.

“What?” Blaine asked, propping himself up. Kurt was flushed from his hairline to down past his gaping collar. Blaine laid a hand on his heaving abdomen and pushed the end of his shirt up a little, feeling out a lean but not so defined torso. Kurt’s whole body was as hot as his cock, and it made Blaine want to put his mouth all over him.

Kurt breathed out heavily. “I want…”

Blaine skimmed his fingers along Kurt’s sides while he waited for him to speak. What he really wanted to do was wrap them around Kurt’s cock, but since he’d just been pushed off of it he thought he ought to wait.

Kurt bit his lip and then released it. “I want to have sex,” he whispered. “The… way people do.”

Blaine thought he knew what he was asking. “I brought rubbers,” he said. Kurt’s eyes widened and Blaine backpedaled. “We don’t have to use them—I mean, we do if we’re going to do that—”

“Yes,” Kurt said.

“Okay,” Blaine said breathlessly. He got up and retrieved his bag, and mentally cursed himself for putting them at the bottom. When he’d been packing, hiding them had seemed like such a smart idea. He finally pulled them out and shifted closer to Kurt. “How do you want to do it?”

Kurt looked lost. “How do I…?”

“Do you want to wear the rubber, or do you want me to wear the rubber?” Blaine asked after a moment’s deliberation on how best to word it.

“Oh,” Kurt said. He couldn’t get any redder, but it was clear that his blush wasn’t all exertion anymore. “How do you want to do it?”

It seemed clear that Kurt was hoping he’d take the lead, but Blaine had to make sure. “Do you want me to decide?”

Kurt looked visibly relieved. “If you’d like,” he said, not nearly as cool as he obviously wanted to be. Blaine smiled at him and stroked his hand up under his shirt, over his heart. Kurt trembled under his hand and Blaine decided it would be easier for both of them if they didn’t try something where Kurt’s relaxation was an absolute necessity.

“I want you to top,” he told him. “It’s easy; I’ll tell you what to do.”

Kurt’s adam’s apple bobbed. “Okay.”

Blaine grinned at him. “Not that they don’t make you look way harsh, but how ‘bout you finish taking off your clothes?”

“Look what?” Kurt asked blankly, but he finally took active participation in their removal, unbuttoning half the buttons of his shirt and then pulling it off over his head.

“Way harsh,” Blaine repeated. He scooted back, grabbed Kurt’s heel, and tugged off his boot so that he wouldn’t run into the same embarrassing impediment that Blaine had. He did the same with the other and let his eyes run up from Kurt’s still half-leather-clad legs to his swollen rosy cock, slim waist, flat chest, and sinewy shoulders. He finally refocused on his face and said, “Really hot.”

Kurt smiled shyly. “Oh,” he said, just short of preening. “Is that surfer talk?” he teased.

“Are you asking if I can handle a longboard?” Kurt burst out laughing. Blaine grinned and tugged at his trousers, and Kurt recovered and pushed at them, and together they managed to pull them off until they were both, finally, naked.

“God,” Blaine groaned, kneeling over Kurt and feeling suddenly humbled and reverent.

“Yeah,” Kurt whispered, his eyes tracking up and down Blaine’s body in loops.

“Lie down with me,” Blaine said, grabbing Kurt’s hands and leaning backward, pulling Kurt down on top of him as he settled. Kurt moaned into his ear when their cocks pressed against each other. He crushed their mouths together as he began to rock, lips and cocks sliding against each other in a perfect counterpoint that made Blaine’s body liquefy. He squeezed Kurt’s hands and Kurt drew them up over their heads so that he was pressed tighter and _everywhere_ and Blaine was so hot he thought he might actually explode.

Literally. In a fashion.

“Wait,” he gasped, turning his face to the side to speak. “Gotta—I’ve got to turn over,” he said, shifting over. Kurt let go of his hands and lifted up enough to let him, planting kisses along his cheek, and jaw, and the back of his neck as he rolled over and settled down. Kurt dropped against his back once he had, and they let out similarly startled moans when Kurt’s cock pressed between Blaine’s cheeks.

“Blaine,” Kurt whimpered. His hips churned; his cock rubbed against the cleft of Blaine’s ass and it sank between his cheeks a little, spreading them around the girth of his cock; his balls throbbed hot at the juncture of Blaine’s thighs and ass; and he came with a desperate breathless sob against Blaine’s shoulder blade as he jerked and spilled all over the small of Blaine’s back.

“Oh,” Kurt sighed, sounding the definition of content, and then, dismayed, “oh, no.” Kurt sat up and Blaine felt him swipe at his back. When Blaine glanced over his shoulder, he saw that Kurt had scooped up the come and was holding it awkwardly in a hand, looking completely lost.

Blaine couldn’t help smiling. It was adorable. And everything before that had been mind-meltingly hot.

Kurt’s looked distressed, however. “I’m so sorry.”

“Can you go again?”

Kurt frowned. “What?”

“Do you think you can go again?” Blaine asked. “I still want you to boink me.”

Kurt gaped at him. “Even after… that?” He waved his hand vaguely and then scrambled to collect it when some of the come in his palm spilled over.

“That was so hot,” Blaine purred. He shifted his hips and Kurt got the message; he backed up so that Blaine could turn over and sit up. “You’re so hot,” he said, crowding in close. He gently clasped Kurt’s wrist, pulled it closer, and licked a stripe across his palm.

“Oh my God,” Kurt breathed out shakily.

Blaine grinned at him, more relieved than he hoped he let on that Kurt found that hot instead of gross.

He shifted, bending his knees and spreading his legs. He encouraged Kurt to crawl between them with a hand pressing on his shoulder and he drew Kurt’s other hand, still wet with come, down below his balls. “Here,” he said, pulling Kurt’s index finger away from his others and touching it to his hole. “Right there,” he gasped, rapidly losing the thread on his cool.

Blaine wouldn’t have thought that it were possible for an expression to be both as soft and as ravenous as Kurt’s was in that moment. He rubbed the pad of his finger in little circles right at the center of Blaine’s hole, smearing come around the crinkled flesh. _His_ come. The urge to bear down and end the teasing was maddening. “Put it in, Kurt,” Blaine choked out.

Kurt straightened his finger and pushed. It slid in with one easy motion, and Kurt’s eyes grew wider and wider the deeper it went, until Blaine could feel the bump of his knuckles pressed against the tight edge of his hole.

He let out the breath he hadn’t even known he was holding, and Kurt’s eyes darted up from his hand to Blaine’s face. “Are you okay?” he asked urgently.

“Yeah,” Blaine said. “Feels good.” It didn’t, exactly—not the way that Blaine had heard that it could feel. But it didn’t hurt at all, and Blaine figured that was what Kurt was really asking. He squeezed around the finger experimentally. It was hard and immediate inside him, and the action made Kurt make a sound like a moose which was definitely the best part.

Kurt pulled his finger halfway out and then pushed it back in, and oh, yes—that definitely felt good. “Keep going,” Blaine urged. “Just in and out, and maybe twist it?” He fell back onto his elbows, spread his legs wider, braced with his heels and lifted his hips. “That’s good, Kurt, feels so good,” he murmured, swaying a little with the motion of Kurt’s hand. Kurt braced his other hand on Blaine’s inner thigh as he began to move his arm faster. Between Kurt’s legs his cock had fattened up, veins sticking up prominently along the shaft and the head florid and shiny wet. Blaine wanted it more than he’d wanted any tournament trophy or concert ticket.

“Use two now,” he gasped, dropping fully to the floor. “C’mon, stretch me out.”

Kurt whimpered and bit his lip. He slipped his finger out and pushed back in with two, but he’d only gotten the the tips of them in before discomfort lashed Blaine’s pleasure, and his hips twitched away from the digits. “Wait, stop.”

Kurt froze. “What? Did I hurt you?” He looked panicked. “We’re stopping?”

“Not stopping-stopping,” Blaine reassured him. He sat up and pecked Kurt on the lips, then grasped Kurt’s hand and pulled it up where he could see it. Well, he thought, that explained it. “The come dried out.”

Kurt stared at him blankly. “We can’t do this dry,” Blaine elaborated. “But don’t worry, we’re not stopping.”

“I was worried about you,” Kurt said, but he nonetheless looked extremely relieved.

Blaine looked left and right around the van and frowned. “Where are the rubbers?”

It turned out that they’d ended up between the foot of Blaine’s sleeping bag and the carpet, which they discovered after a few moments of searching. Blaine scooped them up triumphantly and laid back down.

“They’re lubricated,” Blaine explained, tearing the first open. “Here, give me your hand.”

Kurt held it out and Blaine rolled the condom down over his index and middle finger. “Uh…” Kurt said, kneeling over Blaine and looking down at it dubiously.

“Just hold the end down with your thumb so it doesn’t, like, slip off,” Blaine said, trying to project an aura of complete certainty. Privately he was really glad in that moment that Kurt was a virgin, because that meant he didn’t have any smoother, better prepared guys to compare Blaine against.

Kurt reached down carefully and rubbed his fingers around his hole. “Oh,” Blaine groaned softly—it was so much slicker than the come had been, and even though the condom wrinkled between Kurt’s fingers and Blaine’s skin because it was loose, it still felt amazing. Blaine groped underneath his bent legs, closed over Kurt’s knee, and squeezed. “Try two again.”

With a look of great concentration that made Blaine’s heart swell but also made his cock ache, Kurt pulled the condom as tight as he could and began to press both fingers inside. They squeezed in slowly but without impediment as Blaine’s body spread and welcomed them in. Kurt pushed them in, all the way, and then he rubbed his thumb over the small span of skin between Blaine’s hole and Blaine’s balls. Blaine jumped, startled by the jolt of pleasure, and he clenched around Kurt’s fingers, this time involuntarily. They both groaned loudly.

Blaine squeezed Kurt’s knee tight. “Just get me used to these two and then give me your cock, okay?”

“Okay,” Kurt said, face burning but voice quaking with anticipation.

Kurt began to slide his fingers in and out, in and out, each pass a little easier and a little faster. Kurt’s wrist rotated palm-up when he pulled out and when he twisted back in the back of his hand brushed up against Blaine’s balls. Part of Blaine wanted to wrap a hand around his poor patient cock and jerk off, but the rest of him was stupefied by the heat rolling up his spine. He couldn’t stop letting out little sighs and whimpers, but Kurt didn’t seem to mind. His attention was mostly centered on watching his fingers disappear and reappear, although every now and then he stared up at Blaine’s face with a wondrous expression.

“Now,” Blaine finally said. “Now, do it now.”

Kurt’s fingers came out with an unmistakable squelch. He pulled the condom off his hand, and then looked around helplessly. “Where should we…?”

“Drop it on my underwear,” Blaine said. He reached his hand above his head and groped around until his fingers closed on his jeans, and then he fished the briefs out and dropped them beside them.

Kurt frowned. “Are you sure?”

“I have another pair,” Blaine said. Of everything in the car, he figured his underwear was the most disposable if a used condom somehow wrecked it. And the gesture made him feel gentlemanly, in all honesty.

Kurt laid the condom gingerly down while Blaine ripped the second one open. He rolled it down Kurt’s cock with a series of strokes. It took more than he expected to get the condom to unroll all the way, but since it meant he got to stroke Kurt’s cock, Blaine wasn’t complaining. Kurt had his teeth clamped down on his lip and he stared at the ceiling the whole time, his whole body tensed.

And then it was on. Blaine drew in a slow, deep breath, his skin buzzing with anticipation. Kurt dropped forward onto his hands and knees, and the head of his cock slipped up the cleft of his ass and caught underneath his balls. Blaine felt about a hundred degrees hotter just having him rest there.

“Oh!” Kurt said, sitting back suddenly.

“Wrong direction,” Blaine said, tugging on his arms.

“I have to take off my socks!” Kurt insisted, hooking his fingers in the offending garments and yanking them off. Then he shuffled closer again. He took his cock in hand and looked from it to Blaine’s ass. “Can you lift your legs more? Please?”

Blaine dropped a calf over Kurt’s shoulder and his eyes widened adorably. “Oh.” He turned and pressed a soft kiss to Blaine’s shin. “Okay.” He lifted Blaine’s other leg and leaned forward. He dug his thumb into Blaine’s ass cheek and pushed it out of the way, and then the slick, blunt head of Kurt’s cock was rubbing up against Blaine’s entrance.

Taking it in was an excruciating squeeze, and Blaine gasped and the muscles in his legs twitched as they were held open and up and out of the way while he was slowly pierced. It was tight, so tight, and Kurt felt huge and immense and never-ending, and it was everything that Blaine had wanted but he felt like he was going to crack. Kurt was _big_ , bigger than Blaine had appreciated when he’d just had him in his mouth and his hand.

And then the building pressure popped as suddenly and easily as ears adjusted to air pressure, and Blaine groaned and tilted his head back as pleasure flooded him. Kurt stopped only when he had to, when his cock was buried to the root and his hips were flattening Blaine’s ass. Kurt crouched over him, one of Blaine’s legs thrown over his shoulder and the other locked between his forearm and bicep, his chest heaving, his face flushed and sweaty and still the most beautiful that Blaine had ever seen, and looking down at him like he was a miracle.

And all that with Kurt’s cock sunk immense and momentous inside his ass. “Kurt.” His voice shook a little. “You need to move.”

Kurt’s hips hitched forward and then back, a slight slow drag at Blaine’s skin. Blaine grit his teeth. “Fast.”

Kurt seized Blaine’s hips and dragged them higher as he got onto his knees.

It was hard, and fast, as Kurt drove downward, using his leverage so that he slammed into Blaine, and then pushing back out against gravity, his body working and straining and sweating over Blaine’s and looking so good that Blaine could have bitten his fist and cried. Every thrust sent Blaine sliding up the nylon of the sleeping bag, and then Kurt’s arms flexed and he pulled Blaine back into place. The van was rocking with them, creaking on its wheels—it was obvious what they were doing, and Blaine didn’t care.

The first time Kurt tried to speak, only air escaped. He was hoarse when he said, “Jerk yourself off. Please, please—”

What had been anxious politeness all evening sounded like begging now. Blaine fumbled for it, clumsy with eagerness, but once he grasped his cock in the circle of his fist, the force of Kurt’s thrusts pushed his cock through his fingers all on its own. It was like Kurt was jerking him off, in a fashion, even as he was using both of his hands to hold up and fold Blaine’s lower half, and it made Blaine wheeze he was so turned on.

Kurt made a desperate sound and that was what pushed Blaine over the edge—he came in spurts across his chest, and some of it even landed as high as his chin. Blaine’s tongue swiped out, but he couldn’t reach it—and that was what set Kurt off. He came with a sob, same as before, and Blaine soaked up every detail now that he finally got to see it: his chin dipping and his face screwed up, the perspiration making his hair flop down and cling to his scalp, the way that the muscles in his arms flexed as he held Blaine in position and the heaving in his abdomen and the spasming of his hips as he came in jerks inside of him.

Panting, Kurt very slowly eased Blaine’s legs down, scooting back and slipping out as he did. Blaine’s legs were tingling. All of him was tingling, but his legs most of all. He catalogued the sensory input in a haze while Kurt fumbled to get the condom off. His hands slipped twice before he peeled it off and dropped it with the other. Blaine wiggled his toes and winced at the pins and needles.

“What’s wrong?” Kurt was suddenly hovering over his side, looking nervous. “Did I hurt you?”

“What?” Blaine asked blankly. “Oh, no—my ass is fine. My legs just fell asleep.”

Kurt blinked, looking taken aback, and then he smiled sheepishly. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to be too much.”

“Kurt,” Blaine said gravely, reaching up and squeezing him around the back of the neck. “You’re not too much. Not ever.”

He pulled Kurt down into a long, lovely kiss, the loveliness of which was in no way diminished by Kurt licking come off of his chin. When they finally parted his legs felt mostly normal again, and Blaine sat up.

“I have to call my mom when the concert is over.”

“That should be soon,” Kurt said. “So we should probably get dressed.” They did so in companionable silence, and then Blaine slipped out to visit the payphones while Kurt opened the van door to air it out and said he would dispose of the used condoms. It wasn’t a moment too soon; people began to stream out of the arena as he approached, and Tina and Mercedes pounced on him while he was speaking with his mother. They ribbed him good-naturedly for ditching with Kurt on the walk back to the van, and when they finally returned the three of them found Kurt reclining—a little too posed to be casual to Blaine’s eyes, but a good imitation—and listening to the walkman.

“Thank God you’re back,” Kurt said to Tina and Mercedes, pulling the headphones off. “It took so long we had to start playing the disco.”


	7. Chapter 7

Blaine’s insides were rioting.

There he was, stretched out next to the foxiest guy he’d ever met, still sweaty and sticky and aching under his clothes, a remnant from having just gotten laid for the first time a handful of hours before. He wanted everything so much at that moment. He wanted to take his shirt off again and hold Kurt against his chest; he wanted to scream from the roof of the van that he had just had sex and it was even better than he’d ever imagined possible. He wanted to tell Kurt everything that was in his heart at that exact moment, which would’ve taken an eon, it was so much.

The van was silent and dark; no one else seemed to be having problems sleeping. Not even Kurt, who looked blissful in his slumber in the few bits of him Blaine could see. There had been a moment, a brief moment, where Kurt had reached out to Blaine in his sleep, and Blaine was still cursing the snore Tina let out at that moment, jolting Kurt out of his deep sleep and sending him turning into a different position.

It was hopeless. Blaine had to talk to someone. But it was 2 o’clock in the morning, and he wasn’t going to risk waking either Mercedes or Tina up in an attempt to rouse Kurt for conversation. That left only one person.

Blaine fumbled for his fanny pack, which lay next to his pillow, where he’d put it after he returned from calling his mom. He grappled with it, finally getting it back on. He toed on his sneaks and then slid out the back of the van as quietly as he could manage.

The parking lot wasn’t empty—there were a handful of other vehicles doing the same thing they were. They were still a fair ways away from the venue, but Blaine crossed the distance to the payphones in little time. It was cold again, something Blaine was beginning to realize was pretty normal for Ohio weather. He checked the chart on the front of the phone and counted out as many dimes from his roll as it said he needed to make a long distance call. He deposited all the dimes then dialed the number he knew by heart.

“Evans’ residence,” a chipper female voice said. “May I ask who’s calling?”

“Oh hey, Mrs. Evans,” Blaine said, sighing a little. “It’s Blaine.”

“Blaine! It’s so good to hear your voice, how are you?” Mrs. Evans said, her voice a little crackly through the line. “We miss you around here.”

“I miss you guys, too,” Blaine said, crossing his arms as he caught the headset between his ear and his shoulder. He needed a warmer jacket.

“How is Ohio?” Mrs. Evans went on. Blaine chuckled.

“Ohio’s...interesting,” Blaine said. He wondered if she could tell something was different about him just by the tone of his voice.

“Are you making friends?” Mrs. Evans asked, and Blaine bit his lip.

“I’m trying,” Blaine replied, thinking only of the boy in the back of the van.

“Well you never had a problem making friends,” Mrs. Evan said with a laugh. “Speaking of, you didn’t call to talk to me, I’m sure. Want me to go get Sam for you?”

“Yes please,” Blaine said with a loud exhalation.

“It’s a little late for phone calls, but we’ll make an exception for you,” Mrs. Evans said. “Calling from such a distance. I’ll hurry up and get him, long distance calls are expensive. Hang on.”

Blaine waited the half a minute or so it took for Sam to get on the line, bouncing back-and-forth between his legs in an effort to warm up.

“What’s happening, bro?” Sam’s voice came through the line, all chipper cheer. “Man, it’s been forever since you called. What’s the word, thunderbird?”

“I just had sex,” Blaine said before he could stop the words from tumbling out of his mouth. “Like, actual sex. Like we read about in that book Cooper gave me when we were 12, about those two dudes—”

“Whoa, bro, no way!” Sam said. “Hang on.” Blaine heard the telltale sound of Sam stretching the phone cord out of the kitchen and into the pantry, where he hid to do most of their private conversations. ”K, I’m back. I thought you were going to that concert tonight, with that guy you dig—Ohhhhhhhhhhh.”

“We were hanging out in the van, right, because neither of us were that into the show and then we were listening to my walkman, right, sharing the headphones—”

“Dude, that’s a totally killer move,” Sam said. “Your faces are like, right up next to each other’s—”

“And then he just turned to me, and then we were kissing, and then—” Blaine cut off. “I’m not a virgin anymore, Sam.”

“Right on, dude,” Sam said. “And it’s not like me with the lady at the cabana I worked at this summer, bro, you actually dig this guy.”

“I do, I totally do,” Blaine said, his heart warm in his chest. “I don’t know what to do.”

“It sounds like you got it in the bag,” Sam said. “He digs you, you dig him. What’s there to do?”

“I don’t know,” Blaine said. “He isn’t out.”

“Ohhh, right on,” Sam said. “Can’t he just come out, then?”

“It isn’t like that, Sam,” Blaine said, fondly rolling his eyes.

“You’ll figure it out, dude,” Sam said. “And hey! Maybe now that you’re dating the manager you can actually get some rink time!”

Blaine laughed. “Yeah, that’s what I’m in this for. The rink time.”

A voice interjected then, robotic and loud in Blaine’s ear: “Please deposit another forty cents if you would like to continue this call.”

“Ahh, I gotta go,” Blaine said. “Thanks for talking, man. I needed it.”

“No problem, bro,” Sam said. “Let me know how it goes in the morning.”

Blaine hung up and turned to make his way back to the van. To his great, terrified surprise, someone was standing behind him. He jumped, his heart rate soaring into his ears in the split second it took for him to recognize Kurt.

“Hey!” Blaine said, his heart skidding into a different direction. “What are you doing out here?”

“I woke up and you were gone,” Kurt said, and his arms were crossed across his chest and, wow, he didn’t look very happy. “I had to go to the bathroom anyway so I came outside and I saw you over here. I thought something was wrong, so I walked over.” Kurt shook his head.

“Nothing’s wrong,” Blaine said, stepping closer to Kurt. But something definitely was. Kurt’s eyes were fire as he stepped out of Blaine’s reach.

“‘I won’t blab about you to anyone,’” Kurt mimicked, his voice pure ice. “God, and I believed you.”

“Wait, Kurt—” Blaine said, trying once again to reach for him. “That wasn’t anyone, it was my best friend Sam, in California.”

“It doesn’t matter who it was, Blaine,” Kurt said, his voice rising in pitch. His cheeks were angry hot pink splotches. “You—I thought you understood.”

“I do,” Blaine said, his hands flopping uselessly at his sides. “I do understand, Kurt—”

“You clearly don’t,” Kurt snapped, wiping angrily at his eyes. Oh, he was crying. Oh no. Blaine tried again to move closer but this time Kurt swatted at his hands. “Don’t. I get it, you know. Things are different in California, or whatever, people are more free love or whatever, but it’s not like that here.”

“Tina and Mercedes don’t care,” Blaine said.

“Tina and Mercedes don’t really get it,” Kurt spat out, looking up at the sky. “They don’t know what we got up to in the van, really. And that is not some invitation to go and tell them.”

“I wouldn’t,” Blaine said, his heart aching. “Kurt—”

“I wish I could believe you,” Kurt said, his hand wiping at his eyes once more. “God, I’m an idiot.”

“Kurt, I’m sorry—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Kurt said, stepping back once more. “Whatever this is, its over. It will never happen again.”

“Kurt—” Blaine tried once more, but Kurt was already storming back to the van. Blaine raced to keep up but Kurt’s legs were longer and more determined. He was back in the van and in his sleeping bag before Blaine reached the door. Blaine crawled in and kicked off his shoes, slipping into his own sleeping bag. He rolled over as close to Kurt as he could manage. He could tell by the pace of his breathing that Kurt wasn’t sleeping yet.

“Kurt,” Blaine whispered. Kurt immediately hissed out a “shhh.” “Please talk to me,” Blaine said lowly.

“Not here,” Kurt said. “Please just respect my wishes for once.”

Blaine shut up. Kurt rolled over, curling into himself. Blaine listened as Kurt’s breathing evened out, but struggled to fall asleep himself.

Morning came too soon, bringing with it the bright sunlight through the windows and an extremely loud Tina.

“Up and at ‘em, boys,” Tina called.

“And you’d better be decent back there, we don’t want to see any boy bits hanging out,” Mercedes added. Blaine blinked his eyes open to see Kurt already dressed in his fresh clothes for the day.  
“Don’t be gross,” Kurt said, shoving the rest of his things in his bag. Blaine tried his best to make eye contact with him, but Kurt steadily avoided his gaze. “I’m going to the portapotty, you can change.”

It took Blaine a second to realize Kurt was talking to him. “Oh, okay.” Kurt was out of the van before Blaine could say anything else.

He changed quickly, going commando because he’d already used his change of underwear the night before. He slipped out of the van and right into Tina.

“So?” she asked, bouncing on her heels. “How was last night?”

“Nothing happened, Tina,” Blaine said, wrestling his way back into his jacket. He could see Kurt’s back as he walked toward the bank of portapotties. “Leave it, okay?”

“You say nothing happened,” Tina replied, “But the two condom wrappers on the floor of the van suggest otherwise.”

Blaine’s heart plummeted to the bottom of his stomach. How had they forgotten the wrappers? “W-what?” he said. “Condoms, I don’t—”

“Come off it,” Tina replied, crossing her arms.

“Dude, have you seen your brother’s van?” Blaine tried, gesturing helplessly. A pitiful little laugh escaped his throat. “I mean, your brother obviously has sex in this van.”

“Don’t remind me,” Tina said. “That is why it is extra bogey that you did.”

“We didn’t—” Blaine said, unable to force the lie from his throat. “How do you know they’re not leftover? From your brother?”

“Because I cleaned the van, Blaine,” Tina said. “After he did. Double cleaned, remember?”

“Oh my God,” Blaine said, flushing bright red. His throat felt closed. “Tina, please, be cool about this. He doesn’t want anyone to know. Does Mercedes know? Please tell me Mercedes doesn’t know.”

“I don’t think she saw them,” Tina replied. “I just noticed them when I was folding the seats back up. I didn’t pick them up, by the way, because that is totally grody, so if you want to make sure Mercedes doesn’t see them you’d best get back in there and pick them up yourself.”

Blaine tore back into the van, grabbing the wrappers and shoving them into pocket with superhuman speed. Just in time, too—Mercedes popped back in seconds later.

“Nothing like the morning after a nice sleep in a van, huh?” Mercedes said stretching. “Can’t wait to get back to school in an hour or so.”

Blaine smiled, but the rest of him felt like falling apart. He managed to make a perfunctory call to his mom before they got on the road—the last thing he needed was one more person mad at him.

The ride itself did little to quell the uncomfortable sensation building in the pit of Blaine’s stomach. The van was far quieter than it had been the night before, which Blaine knew didn’t seem suspicious to Tina and Mercedes because of the early hour. Blaine could see the resolute set of Kurt’s jaw, however, and the closed off stance of his body. It was hard to look at him and not see the soft lines of his skin in Blaine’s memory; he could still feel the press of Kurt’s cock inside of him. Blaine wanted to kiss away the anger on Kurt’s face, make the worry disappear.

Blaine needed to fix this, and fast.

There was only one thing Blaine could think of to remedy a hurt like this outside of talking it out, which Kurt refused to do. Blaine headed home as soon as school let out, dragging his sleeping bag and overnight bag with him. He threw both of them down on his floor and made a beeline for his stereo with its double cassette deck and turntable.

Blaine Anderson was about to make the greatest mixtape in the history of ever.

A good mixtape was an art, and one that Blaine considered himself proficient in. It wasn’t easy, planning it out ahead of time and making sure that each song flowed into the one that came after. He selected a wide variety of songs, from The Beatles on up to current hits from the Go-Gos. He made sure every possible permutation of what he felt for Kurt was on that tape.

Then he set about making the perfect cover, made from magazine clippings. He even titled it, after the first song on the tape: “Hard to Say I’m Sorry.”

He had to take a break for dinner, where his mom interrogated him to make sure he’d actually made it back for school and told him he stunk and had to take a shower. Blaine didn’t want to, though—he wasn’t ready to wash Kurt off of him.

The work on the tape took Blaine most of the evening. By the time he collapsed into bed, the tape was perfect.

Or so he thought, anyway.

In the morning, Blaine gave in and showered, putting extra care into selecting his outfit. He slid out of the house earlier than normal, telling his mom he had a shift at the video store (which he did, but it wasn’t for another couple of hours). He hopped on his bike and pedaled over to the Hummels’ house at full speed. He knocked on the door, grinning when Carole answered.

“Oh hi, Blaine!” Carole said cheerfully. “I wasn’t expecting you this morning.”

“Hi, Mrs. Hummel,” Blaine said. “I was in the neighborhood and I remembered I wanted to ask Kurt about a homework assignment, so I thought I’d stop by. I hope that isn’t an inconvenience.”

“Not at all,” Carole said. “Kurt’s up and cleaning his room already. You can head on up.”

Blaine grinned and toed off his converse in the front hall before slipping up the stairs. He remembered right where Kurt’s room was. There was music coming from it and the door was open. He slid up to the door and knocked lightly on the frame.

“I know, I’ll go get my laundry in a second—” Kurt said, turning to the door before freezing in place. His hair was held adorably out of his face with a headband and he wore an off-the-shoulder sweatshirt straight out of the Physical video and tiny running shorts. Blaine’s body began responding to the sight without his permission and he bit the inside of his cheek to try and keep himself in check. “What are you doing here?”

“I have something for you,” Blaine said, stepping further into the room. Kurt stepped back.

“I’m not interested,” Kurt said, turning back to his closet. “Please leave.”

“You don’t even know what it is yet,” Blaine said, reaching into his sweatshirt pocket. Kurt kept his back to him.

“It doesn’t matter what it is,” Kurt said. “I’m not interested in anything that comes from you.”

“But it’s a mixtape,” Blaine said, as if that made all the difference in the world. Kurt spun around then, and Blaine saw something warm light up in Kurt’s eyes.

“You made me a mixtape?” Kurt said, his voice lilting up. Blaine grinned.

“No,” Blaine said, stepping closer. “I made you the most killer mixtape that has ever been made. I worked all night on it.”

For a moment, for one single, glorious moment, Blaine believed everything would be okay. Kurt looked at him the way he’d looked at him the night before, hungry and adoring all at once. And then, just as quickly, he shut down.

“I don’t want it,” Kurt said, turning once again to his closet. “Please leave.”

“Kurt,” Blaine said, and he wasn’t ashamed at the note of pleading that entered his voice. “I am so sorry. I know, I totally screwed the pooch here, but I am so sorry. I never meant to hurt you.”

“But you did,” Kurt said, turning and fixing Blaine with such anger that Blaine actually stumbled backward. “I trusted you, with something I have never told anyone before. Ever. I trusted you with everything, and you couldn’t even wait until we were back in Lima to break your promise.”

“I know,” Blaine said, his throat catching. “I know, it was just a big deal for me, too—”

“Then you should have talked to me about it,” Kurt said. “Not some other guy in California.”

“Are you jealous of Sam?” Blaine asked. “Because I told you, he’s my best bro, that’s it—”

“No, I’m not jealous of Sam!” Kurt said too loudly, throwing a sweater to the ground. “Please just go. And take your stupid mixtape with you or so help me, I will burn it in effigy over the roller rink.”

Blaine couldn’t argue with the severity of that threat. “Okay,” he said, sliding the tape back into his pocket. “I’m sorry I bothered you.”

Blaine slipped out of the Hummel house as quickly as he could, grateful for not running into Carole on the way. He felt sick, the weight of the tape heavy in his pocket.

Still, there was a part of him that couldn’t help wondering why Kurt cared about him salvaging the tape at all.

“If he hates me so much you’d think he’d want to burn the tape in effigy,” he said to himself as he settled in on his bike, glancing up at the window where he knew Kurt’s room was. He could just make out Kurt looking down at him through parted curtains. The curtains closed quickly, though, when Kurt saw him looking.

Blaine had no idea what he was supposed to do now.


	8. Chapter 8

There was really only one choice for Blaine at that moment, of course—work. He let his muscle memory guide him toward the Lima Mall, already bustling on a Saturday morning. He locked his bike up on the rack out front and made his way inside, stopping first at the Orange Julius for a little sugar support. He meandered down the rest of the way to the video shop, ready for some solitary, mindless labor and some commiseration from a solidly reticent Mike.

What he found was a giggling Mike, leaning in across the counter to an equally giggly Tina.

“Hey,” Blaine said, scuffing his way up to the counter. They had the decency to look slightly ashamed.

“Oh, hey man,” Mike said, looking at Blaine like he had never seen him before. “What are you doing here?’

“I work on Saturdays,” Blaine said, before taking a very aggressive slurp from his Orange Julius. “What is Tina doing here?”

“I’m just hanging out,” Tina replied. “My mom dropped me off for the whole day to get me out of the house. Isn’t that the most?”

“Totally the most,” Blaine said, turning in the direction of the rewind station.

“What’s eating you?” Tina said, shuffling up behind him. Blaine stole a glance over his shoulder to make sure that Mike was out of earshot. He had moved up to helping a wealthy-looking business man. “I would’ve thought after your private concert with Kurt you’d be looking a little more Tigger, a little less Eeyore.”

“Tina, whatever you think you know about what happened,” Blaine said, staring hard into her eyes in an attempt to more thoroughly make his point, “You don’t. You don’t know anything—”

“Blaine,” Tina said, putting her hand on Blaine’s shoulder. “It’s okay, you don’t have to be embarrassed—”

“I’m not,” Blaine said. “But please don’t say anything to anyone. Please don’t make this any worse than it is.”

“It’s bad?” Tina said, frowning. “How bad?”

Blaine pulled the tape out of his hoodie pocket. “He refused my mixtape.”

Tina gasped, a reaction Blaine found to be perfectly appropriate. She covered her mouth with her hand. “You made him a mixtape and he didn’t take it?”

“So I don’t know what to do next,” Blaine said, slamming his Orange Julius on the table. Some of the drink sloshed onto his hand and he sullenly sucked it off. Even Orange Julius was against him today. What had he ever done to deserve this? “I’ve never been in a relationship before, not really. What are you doing with Mike? It seems to be working.”

“Not what you’re doing with Kurt, that’s for sure,” Tina said, throwing her hair over her shoulder. “I don’t know, I haven’t really thought about it. We just start talking and then we’ve been talking and it’s been hours and we’re not tired of talking yet. And we just, you know, want to see each other, so we do. It’s just really easy.”

“Easy,” Blaine said, feeling his heart plummet further in his chest. Things with Kurt were anything but easy.

“I tell you what,” Tina said. “Mercedes is having a special show tonight at the rink, on Saturday instead of Friday this week. Mike and I are going. You should come.”

“You got Mike to go to the rink?” Blaine said, looking once more at Mike, just in time to find him stealing a glance back at Tina and waving. Tina waved back, then turned to Blaine.

“Uh, yeah?” Tina said. “It wasn’t that hard or anything.”

“I don’t think so, Tina,” Blaine said. He didn’t want to be the awkward third wheel. Or seventeenth. “I just want to go home and wallow I think.”

“Well, if you change your mind you know where to find us,” Tina said. “Mercedes is starting at 7 tonight.”

Blaine nodded and watched Tina make her way back over to Mike. He slid back into his rewind station, put his headphones on, and got to work.

Tina was still there when his shift ended at 3. Blaine didn’t even bother saying goodbye to them. He hopped on his bike and rode it home, which he was happy to find empty. Gone Antiquing! the note on the table read. Blaine toed off his shoes and made his way up to his bedroom, which was still set up for mixing tapes. Blaine took Kurt’s tape out of his sweatshirt pocket and pushed it to the back of his nightstand drawer. Before he even conceived of a plan, Blaine had slid back down to the floor near his double cassette player. He was making a second tape in seconds. This one was for him.

“Don’t, don’t you want me?” Blaine sang along as he wrote the title on the tape insert. “You know I can’t believe it when I hear that you won’t see me.” Blaine’s voice cracked a little as he let the song continue on with him.

“Tainted Love” came next, and then “Harden My Heart,” and before Blaine knew it he was going back into the recesses of his tapes to find the songs that hurt the worst. He had teared up by “All Out of Love” by Air Supply and was soon belting “I Want You to Want Me” through the early sobs. But it wasn’t until he found a song he’d almost forgotten—a song that so perfectly captured his situation and mocked it at the same time.

“Her young face was like that of an angel,” Blaine joined in on the second verse. “Her long legs were tan and brown.”

Blaine flopped back on his back, feeling the hot tears dripping down the sides of his face and into the crevasses of his ear as the next line of the verse washed over him. “Better keep your eyes on the road son. Better slow this vehicle down.”

“Cause like a picture he was laying there,” Blaine joined back in, not even noticing as he began changing the pronouns. “Moonlight dancing off his hair. He woke up and took me by the hand.”

Blaine gulped in a huge lung of air that burned his throat. “He’s gonna love me in my chevy van and that’s alright with me.”

He just laid there after that, not even having the energy to care that he recorded the rest of the K-tel compilation he had that song on, which meant he was gonna have to rewind and record over it later. He wallowed in the mellow sounds of the mid-seventies until his mom knocked on his door and poked her head in when he didn’t answer.

“Okay, I don’t know what is going on with you,” she said. “But this is two days in a row now and even I can spot a trend like that.”

“It’s nothing,” Blaine said, draping an arm over his face and sniffling into the sleeve of his sweatshirt. Summer came further into the room and perched on the edge of Blaine’s bed, staring down at the supine form of her son.

“It’s a boy,” Summer said. Blaine scoffed and rolled onto his side, away from her. “Give me some credit, here. I was a flower child in San Francisco for a couple of years, Blaine. I’ve seen boys cry over boys before.”

“M’fine,” Blaine muttered stubbornly.

“Honey,” she said, putting a hand on his shoulder and gently but firmly rolling him back over. “Just because I don’t think you’ll have these feelings forever doesn’t mean I don’t think they hurt right now. And if you let me, I can help. You are not the first queer boy I’ve met. Nor the first one I’ve loved, so. Talk.”

Blaine shook his head, tears welling in his eyes once more but for a different reason. “I can’t.”

Summer nodded, then looked to the ground for a long moment before speaking. “It’s that Kurt boy, isn’t it?”

Blaine couldn’t stop the sob that came out of him then, though he tried his best to say, “No, no,” in hopes of distracting his mom.

“What’s going on?” Blaine’s mom asked. “Is he not...like you? Because he seemed...more like the boys I knew in San Francisco, if you know what I mean.”

“He’s not out,” Blaine whispered, sniffling noisily. “He told me not to tell anyone, and I did. And now he hates me.” And now Blaine had again. At least Kurt couldn’t hate him more than he already did, he thought miserably.

“I’m sure he doesn’t hate you,” Summer said. “He’s just hurt. You have to apologize.”

“I did apologize,” Blaine wailed, balling his fists up and shoving them into his eyes in an attempt to stem a fresh bout of tears.

“Then you have to apologize again,” Summer said. “You’re not helping either of you all sprawled out on your carpet like this. Have you even vacuumed since we moved in?”

“No one ever taught me how to vacuum,” Blaine cried.

“Ok, get up,” Summer said, standing herself. “Come on, up up up.”

Blaine grumbled but did as he was told, coming to stand in front of his mother. She looked him square in the eye. “Now, you are not allowed to be at home tonight.”

“You’re sending me out to cry in the streets?” Blaine said, gesturing toward his window. “People will think I’m the wolf man. I feel like the wolf man.”

“You just need a comb,” Summer said, running her fingers through his bangs. “And no, I am sending you out to have fun with your friends. I know you have some, you just went to a concert with them. And they must be up to something tonight.”

“Mercedes is singing a concert at the rink,” Blaine admitted.

“Well there you go,” Summer said. “It’s the rink, it’s your favorite place in the world.”

“Kurt manages it,” Blaine replied. Summer nodded.

“All the better,” she said. “Kill two birds with one stone. Get in another apology and have fun while you’re doing it, okay?”

Blaine was pretty sure those two things couldn’t coincide but he decided it was worth giving it a shot—and his mother wasn’t giving him much of a choice anyway. If he couldn’t work out his feelings with music, than freestyle roller skating was his only option. For the second time that day, Blaine did his hair and dressed to impress the most fashion-forward stud Blaine knew. He pulled it together and rolled—literally—onto the rink at half past seven.

The rink was crowded like the last time but Blaine was determined to not let that stop him. He found a space in between a handful of couples who were doing their best to rub their coupleness in his face and set a pace faster than anyone else on the rink. It felt good, the stretch in his limbs and the stale smell of wax and speed stick whipping into his face. It felt like home. He took another lap before spinning for a backward lap, weaving in and out of the crowd with practiced ease. He saw a few dirty looks thrown his way, but he also saw a couple admiring glances. Finally, he saw Tina, waving at him from a table. At least, he thought she was waving. Her hand was moving frantically but it didn’t seem very friendly—not combined with the frown on her face. Blaine started to slow, but it wasn’t enough to temper his fall when a shoulder crashed into him at full force. Blaine skidded to the ground, spinning once before he came to rest in front of the girl who’d hit him.

“Oops,” said the small girl with an exceedingly tight, curled blonde ponytail at the crown of her head and a familiar face. “I didn’t see you there.”

“It’s cool,” Blaine said, reaching a hand up to her for assistance. She crossed her arms instead of taking it. The rest of the rink continued skating around them, and without another word the blonde rejoined the flow. Blaine moved to his knees in an effort to get back up, but no sooner had he done so when another girl skated by at close quarters, using the momentum behind her movements to send him spilling back to the ground.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the girl with the long dark hair said when she spun back around. “Were you in my way?”

“I just need a little help—” Blaine said, and within seconds the girl had wheeled right over the fingers of Blaine’s right hand. The pain was excruciating; Blaine had no idea what came out of his mouth at that moment.

“You need a lot of help,” said the dark-haired girl. “But mostly, you need help right out that door, because you’re not welcome here.”

“What?” Blaine said, pulling his hand back to his chest as soon as she released it. “This is a public rink—”

“No, it’s our rink,” the girl said, tossing her hair over her shoulder. Suddenly Blaine recognized her—she was one of the Divas. She looked different, with her hair loose over her shoulders and wearing an off-the-shoulder lace minidress instead of her usual uniform (“It’s not a uniform,” Tina had corrected him once. “They call it Divawear”). The first girl had been a Diva, too, Blaine realized suddenly. He’d never paid that close of attention to them, because whenever he saw them they’d been around Kurt, who naturally drew focus. “We just let mere mortals use it when we’re done with it because Hummel says that the income is what keeps this place in business or whatever. I don’t pay attention when he talks that often.”

“Is Kurt here?” Blaine asked, and the girl shook her head.

“Oh, no no no,” the girl replied. “You are officially denied access to our dear, prissy, high strung manager, even if you are both friends of Dorothy.”

“What?” Blaine said, becoming dizzier by the second from the groups of people making constant loops around them. The girl kneeled down to his level, fixing Blaine with a narrow-eyed stare.

“I don’t know what you did,” the girl replied. “Though I could probably guess if I wanted to put my mind to it long enough which I really don’t. One johnson on it’s own is boring enough, I can’t imagine how dull two would be.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Blaine said, feeling solidly frozen to the spot. “Did Kurt—”

“Hummel is notoriously tight-lipped,” the girl said. “Almost as notorious as his tight pants. And as his tight legs, which you apparently loosened.”

“I never—”

“Surprise, surprise,” the girl continued. “Hummel is the only person in the world who is actually more uptight after losing the big V.” She sniffed, looked down at him with disdain. “I could smell it on him.”

“Can I talk to Kurt?” Blaine finally tried, though he suspected it would get him mocked for his effort. He was right.

“Kurt has given us explicit instructions,” the girl replied. “No show-off dreamboats from California allowed.”

“Did he call me a dreamboat?” Blaine asked, and the girl rolled her eyes.

“Please keep your disgusting hormonal outpourings to yourself,” the girl said. “I just had a manicure.”

“I need to apologize,” Blaine said, playing to whatever human instinct he hoped existed within this girl. This girl whose name he should know, because he remembered her now—they’d been introduced, in a sense. “Santana,” he said then, and the girl blinked at him. “Please, just—let me talk to him.”

“No can do, tiny feathered one,” Santana replied. “I bag on Hummel a lot but the truth is, he’s totally like family to me. And no one messes with my family but me, capiche?”

With that, Santana sped off back into the coursing crowd. Blaine took a few seconds before he tried getting back to his feet once more, an action made all the more difficult by the throbbing pain in his fingers. It took a few more seconds for him to get his feet working underneath him like usual. The crowds skated further out of Blaine’s way and Blaine realized they were trying to avoid him. Within minutes he’d been branded a pariah on the rink, all because he’d run afoul of the Divas.

As the crowds parted Blaine got a clear view of Lauren Zizes, who was staring him down from the other end of the rink, and he thought it best to get off the floor before she charged him, too. He skated unsteadily off the rink and then continued straight on for the exit. His name was being called, but he didn’t look back or even slow down; he threw his weight onto the handle of the rink’s front door and burst out into the night. Between the burning in his hand and the anger blooming hot in his chest, he didn’t even feel a chill.

People moved around him to get into the rink, throwing him looks, and he kept striding forward until he was standing in the middle of the packed parking lot. The rough pavement was just the sort that he usually kept his skates off of at all costs, but in that moment he didn’t care. He clenched his fists, winced, uncurled the hand with the smashed fingers, and clenched the other tighter. He tried to cool off, but he kept getting madder instead.

For the first time, Blaine thought that Kurt was a jerk. Yeah, Blaine had messed up, but he hadn’t done anything bad enough to deserve being treated like _this_ , and if Kurt thought so, then he was a real hoser.

Blaine’s gaze fell on a van. He grit his teeth and looked down at his hands. He wished that he’d never pushed this thing. He wished that he’d never come to Ohio at all; that he was back west, with wheels under his heels and the wind in his fringe. He missed artistry, and good sportsmanship, and, in all honesty, he missed being good at something. Being the best at something.

He hadn’t thought love would be easy for him, not when the closest he’d ever gotten had been someone who’d wanted a quickie on a toilet, but he knew it wasn’t supposed to be this hard.

“Blaine!” Tina burst out of the rink, with Mike right behind her. Blaine realized that they must have been the ones calling to him. “Oh, jeez, are you okay?” she demanded, grabbing his wrist and pulling his injured hand up to examine. Blaine hissed when she touched the middle finger. “Sorry, sorry…”

“Let’s go into Breadstix,” Mike said. He clapped a hand down on Blaine’s shoulder and started to steer him there as he spoke. “You can sit down, put some ice on that…”

“Eat some fried mac and cheese balls; that’s what I get when I’m in a funk,” Tina chimed in, and then seemed to realize it sounded less tactful than she’d intended. “I mean—”

“We could always use some comfort food,” Mike said.

Tina beamed at him around Blaine. “Yes, exactly.”

Blaine was too worn out to even react to another show of their effortless coupledom. He just let them maneuver him inside the restaurant, and then into a booth, and accepted the ice cubes wrapped in a napkin when Mike handed them to him.

None of the food was especially good, but the portions were large and everything was carbs, so Blaine felt better eating it anyway, although holding a fork left-handed was awkward.

Every few minutes, Tina would reiterate her disbelief over how the Divas had treated him, and that Kurt would sic them on him deliberately. Mike seemed mildly confused as to why Kurt would even want to, and he’d taken to eating quietly rather than ask questions. “Still want to be a Doe-Eyed Diva?” Blaine finally asked Tina with a sardonic smile, and Tina frowned and carefully touched the back of his hand.

“No, of course not.”

“Want to skate with me instead?”

Tina’s frown turned from consoling to confused. “What do you mean?”

Blaine hadn’t thought of it until just then, but it suddenly seemed the best, most obvious idea in the world. “We should start a roller skating team,” he said. “All three of us.”

Tina and Mike exchanged glances. “What?” Blaine asked. “Mike, don’t tell me you still won’t skate in front of people, you were just at the rink!”

“I’ll do it if Tina does,” Mike said, making frankly disgusting mooneyes at her. If Blaine looked half that ridiculous when he looked at Kurt, he was glad he was swearing off romance. Blaine stabbed a meatball and before he could stop himself, began comparing it to his heart: ground up, covered in cheese, served up on a plate…

Blaine cleared his throat and looked at Tina.

“I’d like to, Blaine,” Tina said. “I just don’t know if the Divas would… allow that.”

“I’m sick of worrying what they”—Kurt—“think,” Blaine declared. “C’mon, we don’t need their permission.”

“But the rink…”

“We’ll find someplace else,” Blaine said. “What do you say?”

“Okay,” Tina said finally, smiling. “Sure, let’s do this.”


End file.
